


The Work Never Stops

by okoriwadsworth



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Batman - All Media Types, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Adorable Barry Allen, BAMF Laurel Lance, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Competence Kink, David Cain - Freeform, Domestic Fluff, Evil Slade Wilson, F/M, Laurel Lance is the Black Canary, Mei Gulong - Freeform, Oliver Queen is The Green Arrow, POV Laurel Lance, POV Oliver Queen, POV Thea Queen, Sara Lance Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23665987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okoriwadsworth/pseuds/okoriwadsworth
Summary: How did they get so good? Because, well, the work never stops. (A little snapshot of how the Green Arrow and The Black Canary could have existed in S1.)
Relationships: Henry Fyff/Felicity Smoak, Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen, Nyssa al Ghul/Sara Lance
Comments: 20
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

The work never stops.

(Author’s note: This takes place in S1. If you’re expecting a big fight, you’re not going to get it. This is domestic fluff, and the sort of mundanity and training content one would need for a proper superhero lifestyle.)

**_In A Queen Consolidated Penthouse in The Middle of Starling City………_ **

\---------------------------------------------

It all started with a smile. When Dinah Laurel Lance thinks of what her life is now, as opposed to what it was 6 months ago, she can’t believe it. And all the changes, all the wonderful things she has done in just a few short months, happened because one hooded archer smiled at her.

She remembers it like it was yesterday. Walking into her apartment just on the outskirts of the Glades, far away from the ostentatious moneyed elite that defined Starling City, it dawned on her that her power had gone out. This was worrying her, because she knew she had paid the bill. So, she grabbed her baseball bat and a shotgun that was loaded with buckshot. Never could be too careful in this city, what with all the robberies and home invasions that she had been hearing about recently.

And then she saw him. The city, and the cops particularly, had been talking over and over again about this bowman who had been spending all of his time bringing the city’s oligarchs to justice. He had come to see her, apparently, to tell her how proud he was of the work she was doing at CNRI. He told her she could save the city in the light, just like he was doing in the shadows. And then he smiled.

For some reason, and to this day she still doesn’t know why, that smile awoke a ton of memories. So, as fast as she had ever moved, she reached up and unmasked the Green Arrow. She saw Oliver Queen, the love of her life, and she wasn’t surprised.

She was worried, concerned, and more than a little bit angry. Surprised, though? Not really. Every time her father had mocked him for being a spoiled rich brat, she had defended him not with fire and brimstone speeches but with the truth: he was a good man, and he’d prove it someday.

Turns out he did, just in nowhere near the way she would have expected. They spent all night talking through everything. Laurel unburdened herself of all the anger she had held onto over what he had done with Sara, only to discover that Oliver and Robert were actually taking Sara to China not for illicit sex but to drop Sara off for a food tour through Asia. With that done, the question that came next was this: Did she want to help? And not just as an attorney, and an occasional informant, but as an actual hero?

She decided she did, but with a few conditions. Firstly, there was to be no more senseless killing. Wounding, and knocking people unconscious, was one thing. She didn’t like that either, but she understood the need to create a reputation. But to kill, just to do it? That she could not approve of.

Secondly, he couldn’t be the Hood anymore. To do what they needed to do, he needed to be better and brighter. As she said to him, “This city needs hope, someone to do things in the light of day. It does not need another monster.” So, that day, he became the Green Arrow. And she, because Oliver pointed out she needed a nickname too, became the Black Canary to honor her sister Sara and because, well, she looked good in black.

To get the suits and bleeding-edge tech they needed, Oliver Queen had realized something. He was still, and would be as long as Laurel was around to keep him from losing his head, absolutely filthy-rich. So, he used the Queen Consolidated technological wing to help him create all the things he saw in his mind’s eye. To ensure nothing got out, he befriended a man named Curtis Holt who was only all too happy to help his poorly-hidden crush with everything from creating suits to fabricating all the trick arrows he chose to use when simply firing sharp ones was no longer appropriate. Eventually, Curtis was invited down to the Green Arrow’s base of operations and soon became the “man in the chair”, running their communications.

When it came to the question of medical assistance, they found a man named Henry Fyff who was only all too happy to help once the operation was explained.

Finally, for tactical assistance and battle planning, they relied on Oliver’s ersatz bodyguard, a three-tour veteran of Afghanistan named John Diggle. His ability to see a room, and read who was a threat and who wasn’t, was vital to their work. Besides that, he was a man of truly uncommon honor and dignity. Just begin around him, even in his daytime role as a bodyguard, meant the world to Oliver that someone like that, someone that fundamentally GOOD, saw the best in him. Soon, a little bit at a time, Starling City started to feel like it ought to: A place where families could live freely, and you could go to a movie or a sporting event without being worried your car would be on stilts or you would be mugged or raped.

But and this was the part Oliver realized he neglected, he needed to get Laurel ready. So, he made phone calls to anyone he could think of to get the Black Canary into fighting shape. The Bratva had provided him with the phone number of Lady Shiva, the world’s finest hand-to-hand martial artist, who had gracefully agreed to train Laurel. Curtis and Henry had fabricated an Olympic-level home gym, and Raisa had been all too willing to help him get a top-of-the-line kitchen. And with it all done, he realized today was the first day of her bootcamp.

It was not going to be fun, he realized. He did not relish the thought of having to teach Laurel anything, but he knew he had to. After five years on a deserted island, he still had nightmares. Slade Wilson somehow being alive, and returning to make sure his promise was kept, was always at the forefront. But in a photo finish with that was Laurel, overmatched and unprepared, losing her life over a mistake he should have seen coming. That was his deepest fear, and honestly, he was more than willing to do everything he could think of to insure it didn’t happen.

(Laurel’s POV)

As Dinah Laurel Lance woke up in a raven’s-black pajama set inside a truly awe-inspiring 4-poster California King bed, she stretched and immediately smelled her favorite possible breakfast. Lord knows, she didn’t eat as well as she ought to with her stressful job as a public defender. Many were the mornings when she slept in, and had a blueberry doughnut and a large coffee as her only sustenance until lunchtime when she wolfed down some meal from the food truck outside CNRI. But she didn’t think that was a problem. Lawyer’s hours were notoriously demanding, and it wasn’t like she could just stop what she was doing and have some of…. wait, did she smell strawberries?

Pulling herself out of bed, putting on a pair of slippers, she walked into the main area of the penthouse Oliver had insisted she stay at and felt her jaw hitting her knees at what she saw. Firstly, FOOD. She saw two plates with western omelets on each of them, a small bowl next to that of what looked like homemade fruit salad, and fair-trade Indonesian coffee. On top of that, sitting in a covered container appeared to be stacks of silver-dollar pancakes stuffed with fresh fruit. This was, in every way she could think of, a spread of food worthy of grand things.

But, almost as quickly, she realized something. The last time she had been the beneficiary of a feast like this, it was the day before Oliver left for China. It turned out that, even after everything he had done and all the people he had saved, he was still scared of her. Honestly, it was darkly amusing but a little worrying in equal measure. At this moment, she felt like she was about to be told something dark about a Queen…. Again.

And speaking of Queens, here comes her personal favorite. Sure, she liked Thea. Who couldn’t? But Oliver, he was special to her. Always had been, always will be. Even before she knew his secret, and before she had involved herself in the Green Arrow part of his life, she loved him and loved being around him.

And now, having him back with her, losing him again felt worse.

(Oliver’s POV)

Oh god. He had blown this. Just looking at her, he knew that the grand breakfast he had made was not hitting the way he had intended. Instead, it looked like, she imagined that he was leaving her again. This had to be nipped in the bud, right here and right now, before those doubts crystallized.

“I am not going anywhere. I said I wanted you to be a part of my life, and you are. You always will be for as long as I draw breath. But there is an actual reason why I made you this big breakfast” said a nervous Oliver Queen, realizing he was about to have to tell her she didn’t know something and she needed to be taught. “If you want to be the Black Canary, and join me in being the heroes this city deserves, you need to get a lot better at a lot of things.”

“I can fight, Oliver, because I’m a cop’s daughter. So, don’t go worrying yourself about me.” It was at times like this that Oliver found her stubbornness, which he normally found intensely attractive, deeply frustrating. But how to get through to her? And then, it came to him.

“Hit me. I need you to stand up, and try and hit me” he said, hoping this would get her to see.

(Laurel’s POV)

It was at times like this, when Oliver acted like he knew more than she did, that infuriated her. So, she got up, and moved to swing at him. Only, she found herself with her arm quickly behind her back and a butter knife pressed to her neck before she could even understand what happened.

“This, what just happened, is my darkest fear. Do you want to know why? Because you, remembering how you felt in my arms, was what kept me going through five years of the worst hell anyone could ever experience. And now, I’m back and I can hold you whenever I want. I don’t have to live in the memories of it anymore. But, if I lose you again, I won’t survive. So please, take me seriously. I need you to become as good at this as you possibly can be. This city needs people to save it, and I need you. Please, let me help you with this. PLEASE?”

She heard his sobs of fear, and knew she couldn’t be stubborn any longer. If she wanted to be in this life, and not subject him to pain above and beyond that which he had already suffered through, she supposed she’d have to be willing to learn. How hard could it be?

**_A few hours later…._ **

\---------------------------------------

With breakfast done, Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance got to work. Furniture was moved out of the way, and Oliver smiled as he drug an Olympic-level power rack and full-scale archery practice setup out of the bedroom into the main living area. Apparently, and Laurel was more amused by this than she was willing to say out loud, he had been waiting for this day and preparing for it. But before she could ask what in the hell he was doing, she heard the sound of a doorbell ringing and saw a deep smile on his face. Moving to open the door, she saw the Green Arrow rush into the other room and put on his malachite-green suit before coming back in with a compound bow and quiver of arrows. Whoever this was, he wanted her to know about as little about him as possible.

(Laurel’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance would never admit to being afraid of much. It is, after all, how she went from being the daughter of a beat cop to the top of the class at Starling City Law School. But in this moment, for the first time, she understood what it meant to be scared of someone.

Sure, this woman in front of her was only an inch taller. But she carried herself with grace, and a power that was as awe-inspiring as it was difficult to explain. This was clearly a woman no one trifled with. Add to that her obvious musculature, and the weapons she was carrying with her, and she felt like a student all over again.

“Hello, my child. Am I to understand you are the one who wishes to be known as the Black Canary, who wishes to defend her city from those who wish to bury it under grift and filth?” this mysterious woman said, and Laurel felt the strangest need to confess everything.

“Yes” said Laurel, not feeling like any other answer but the truth was wise.

“My name is Lady Shiva. As a martial artist, I have no peer. The bat in Gotham? I am his equal. And by the time I have left you, you will be my equal. I consider it my solemn task. Furthermore, because I have been told of your desire to not take a life, I will train you in all my skills except those which are guaranteed to end life. But before we begin, I ask you to try and hit me” said this Lady Shiva, and Laurel smiled. Finally, a fair fight.

But as she swung, she noticed something. This sparring session was like trying to grab lightning with tweezers. Whoever this woman was, wherever she came from, she was entirely too fast. Finally, and this felt more like a mercy killing than her pride would let her admit, Lady Shiva ended the sparring session by throwing a roundhouse kick mere millimeters from her face and smiling as Laurel refused to flinch.

“There is much you have left to learn, Ms. Lance. But I believe, sincerely, you can learn it.” At this, Laurel felt better. Not much, barely at all honestly, but a little bit. And right now, a little bit was enough. 

(Oliver’s POV)

The “I Told You So” was burning on his lips like sparks. He had tried to warn her, he really had, but he knew Laurel Lance had to learn when she was wrong herself. No one could tell her.

But that was ok. While she was being put through her paces by Lady Shiva, he was calibrating his bow by firing foam-tipped arrows into multiple different archery targets. This was his weapon, the thing he used to make his training in multiple different forms of martial arts not nearly as necessary as it would be for others in his position. With every arrow he drew back, with every target he hit dead-center, he imagined his father seeing him. When all around him was dark and quiet, he saw his father. And not for the first time, he wondered if his father would see the sacrifice he made as worth making.

Every arrow, then, would be in service of his sacrifice. He would save his city, but not as a tyrant would. That, he knew, would cheapen what his father gave up. Instead, he would help. Every day, from sunrise to sunset, he would use his skills both as Oliver Queen and the Green Arrow to do what others could not.

But, as he thought of it, he realized he hadn’t ever realized whether Laurel would be with him. He wanted her with him, and he just wanted HER.

Even now, in black pajamas that were in no way whatsoever flattering, she was still the most beautiful woman in the world to him. But, and this was something he would admit to her if she asked, he couldn’t wait to see what happened when her training was done. Sure, Lady Shiva was taking over her combat training. But he was going to walk her through exercise, and nutrition.

He knew for a fact that Laurel was one of those women who sincerely believed that heavy weight training would make her “bulky”, and that her diet needed an absolutely complete overhaul. All he could hope for is that after her experience so far today, she’d be a little bit more amenable to learning.

**_The next morning at the Penthouse……_ **

\---------------------------------------------------------

(Laurel’s POV)

As Dinah Laurel Lance woke up from a truly fantastic sleep she felt like her entire body, from the top of her aching head to the bottom of her battered feet, was one giant bruise. As it turned out, Lady Shiva really was as good a martial artist as she said she was. Everything she learned from those self-defense classes her father taught her was useless.

There were two big annoyances about what this meant. Firstly, it meant that she was going to be training with this woman for months, if not years. It didn’t make any sense that she would become a vigilante until she could at least functionally defend herself against those who would wish to do her harm, and right now she could not.

The other thing? She began to realize just how much Ollie had suffered, and how much he was going to continue to suffer, to do the thing she thought was so easy. In this moment, she made a vow to herself. She would stand by him; be the person he could talk about his pain with. And more than that, much more than that, she would listen to him and do what he needed to feel safe with her.

After all, he had shown her enough respect to bring her into this life when she asked. The least she could do now is to show him the same respect by following his lead until she could forge her own path. But first? Breakfast. She needed breakfast.

(Oliver’s POV)

He remembered the first day after training. He remembered how much he hurt. And that was on a deserted island where he had to ignore the pain, because to dwell on it would have meant certain death. He could only imagine what it felt like for Laurel now, where she could focus her mind on it. So, he decided to be kind to her. First thing he would do would be to bring her breakfast in bed. And after she ate, they’d plan what she thought she could do for today.

So, he got to work. First, he made her coffee and cinnamon rolls from pre-made dough he had started the night before. But he wasn’t going to let her have just sweets. He was going to make sure she ate well, so he put together some blueberry pancakes and made a strawberry-mango protein smoothie with a custom-made protein powder specifically designed for their needs by Henry Fyff.

Walking her breakfast into the bedroom, Oliver smiled at how he must look. The Green Arrow, Starling City’s purveyor of fear to those who were leeching off of his city’s resources, was now carrying breakfast in bed to his…. What was she to him, again? He knew what he wanted her to be.

He wanted to grow old with her, and he wanted to save the world with her. But if she didn’t want that, and just wanted to save the world, he could live with that. It’d kill him, but her happiness had always been more important to him than his own.

But, after breakfast, he had to know. It would kill him if he didn’t.

(Laurel’s POV)

She was getting breakfast brought to her in bed, home-cooked breakfast nonetheless, by the only man she could envision herself growing old with. She could see it now, if she focused on it. The two of them, sitting on the porch of a small log cabin in the woods, talking about their adventures and their lives.

That meant she would be Oliver’s wife, and he her husband. And dear god, how saying that in her internal monologue felt…. FANTASTIC. Not just right, because it had felt right from the first time they met each other. To know that she would be the only one who would ever be able to have Oliver Queen ever again felt like a treat, one she wanted to get down to enjoying as soon as possible.

(Oliver’s POV)

And so, as they ate, he felt the creeping need of it scramble up from somewhere around his waist and into his lungs and then from out of his throat.

“What do you want us to be after this? Just friends, just partners, or do you want something more?” He hated how needy that sentence sounded, how DESPERATE. But it was true: It gnawed at him in a way he hated, but he couldn’t imagine his life without her.

(Laurel’s POV)

As she felt her jaw hit the floor, she knew that she had to talk quickly. What Oliver had asked for, what he had WANTED, was so important to him that she had to stitch herself together and come up with the answer for him. He deserved nothing less.

“For five years, I waited for you. For five years, I needed you in my life like I needed air in my lungs. And you ask me if I want something more with you? I will always want you, Oliver. ALWAYS.” And at that, Dinah Laurel Lance wiped tears from her eyes and tucked back into her breakfast. “And after I finish breakfast, Ollie, we’re going to keep on training. I want to be worthy of being your partner.”

**_A few hours later….._ **

\-------------------------------------------------

With that settled, Oliver Jonas Queen and Dinah Laurel Lance walked back into the penthouse’s main living area and came to realize there was another problem. They didn’t know what to do first. Sure, Oliver was working on new trick arrows based on scribbled-down ideas he had sent over to Curtis Holt and Laurel was doing an exceptional job of distracting him with an improvised stretching session. But Oliver knew he needed to do more, be more-prepared, and he needed her right alongside him.

So, they started with the basics. Nutrition.

Oliver pulled down a cast-iron skillet, and grabbed a knife and several onions. Placing a cutting board down, he then pulled out a block of cave-aged gruyere cheese, and several Anaheim peppers. And with a glance, they both knew that he had fallen out of being the loving boyfriend, and right back into the teacher they both knew she needed.

“I’ve known you all my life, Laurel, and I’ve always known you struggled with cooking. It didn’t bother me before, because it’s not like it was going to affect your life negatively. It will now, though. That’s why I cooked for you these past 2 days. I was trying to figure out what you liked to eat, so we could work on making sure you enjoyed it. Because if you live on delivery food, and empty calories, you won’t be as good at this as you can be. And, we both know, you have never started something without being the best at it that you can possibly be” he smiled, and his smile warmed Laurel’s heart in a way nothing else could.

“Besides, Ollie, Lady Shiva might kill me if I did that” smirked Laurel, getting her confidence back a bit at a time.

And with that, she held a butcher knife and began to chop onions. Sure, the first one looked hacked to bits. But with time, and her boyfriend’s careful guidance, she got a whole onion done, with the peppers right behind that. Soon, she was grating cheese and watching as Oliver walked her through the best way to crack eggs and make an omelet. And at this moment, at this exact second, he was so happy he could barely stand it. He had his love back, and she was with him in all things.

This, of course, meant that someone was about to discover his secret.

(Thea Queen’s POV)

There was something….weird going on with her older brother. Ever since he had come back from the island, he was quieter than she remembered. But the one good thing about it was that he had been reconnected with Laurel, in a stronger way than anyone would have ever believed. Sure, Laurel’s reservoirs of kindness were vast and seemingly unlimited. But this? Forgiving someone who had done that to you? No one was that forgiving.

So, over the deliberate protestations of John Diggle, Thea Queen drove to the Queen Consolidated penthouse where she knew Oliver spent most of his time. Whatever was happening, she’d figure out what it was. She needed her brother back in her life. But as she entered the penthouse, flashing her identification to a doorman who was obviously paying her no mind whatsoever, what she expected to see, and what she saw, were two vastly different things.

First off, she saw Laurel Lance eating oatmeal with blueberries, cherries, and blackberries and what looked like fresh-squeezed orange juice. That was weird, but not too much. Lord knows, she had not been the only one who wanted to get into better shape to follow Ollie’s example. And looking around at the truly impressive weight room in the middle of the living room, it seemed like Laurel was intending on becoming a model of superb conditioning.

And then, she saw it. More accurately, she saw the Green Arrow. And it was her brother. All this time, he had been out there doing the jobs the cops wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do. It dawned on her that her brother, the man she had yelled at for smothering her and judging her, really was a hero in the truest sense of the word. He had sacrificed relationships with his family, his own personal happiness, and everything normal people might want just to ensure that his city could be freed from the rot that was choking it.

Before she could stop herself, she ran full-speed at him and hugged him. She supposed he needed to know there was someone besides Laurel who understood, who appreciated him.

(Oliver’s POV)

If he was being honest, he knew the day would come when he’d have to tell Thea. He had made too many enemies, too many powerful people, to fool himself into thinking that those he loved would never be at risk. But he had made plans for it, contingencies for how he wanted to let them know. This was, in no real way, what he had planned.

But he was here now, and he supposed he had to adapt. In that spirit of reworking one’s plans, he returned her hug happily as she kept mumbling “Thank You” into his chest. Despite how awkward he felt about her finding out like this, it did feel good to share this with her. He knew he needed as much love as he could wrap his hands around, but it was always a worry that he’d put his family in danger if he told them the truth about who he was. But Thea? She’d want to fight alongside him, because she had always followed him around. In this moment, he made a choice.

“Speedy? Do you want to join me?” he said carefully, measuring each word and watching for any sign, at all, that she was not interested in this. He prayed to God that she wouldn’t be, that this was the one thing he did that she didn’t follow him on.

“Of course, Ollie. If this is something you need to do, it’s something I need to do. Do I get a cool nickname? Like… Artemis, or something like that?” bubbled Thea, her body language indicating that she was very much enjoying the chance to spend even more time with her older brother.

“THEA DEARDEN QUEEN” yelled Laurel, having cleaned her bowl and put it in the sink. “If you’re going to be a part of this, you will take it seriously. You will stop all the drinking, and partying, and you will start to train. I know what this means to your brother, and what he has given up to see it fulfilled. If you want to join him, if you want to join us, you will take this as seriously as he has. Is that understood?” At that moment, while a gobsmacked Thea nodded, Oliver realized he had made the right choice. No one, anywhere, would have been a better partner for him than her.

And with Thea on board, Oliver went back to walking Laurel through how to make chicken paprikash, an easy dish that could be saved and re-heated for those nights when patrol was overly exhausting. This felt right, and perfect.

**_10 months later……_ **

\------------------------------------------

(Laurel’s POV)

It dawned on Laurel Lance, with far more amusement than it ought to have, just how different her new life was. Lady Shiva had stayed in Starling City past the weekend she was originally intended to. Apparently, she had seen something in Laurel and wanted to see how good Laurel could get. So, it came to pass that every day after work at CNRI was done, and on every weekend, Laurel trained with her. She trained on every form of martial arts that existed, and considered it a great honor when her normally taciturn trainer allowed the barest hint of a smile to cross her face after one of their training sessions that felt more like torture than actual education. Eventually, Laurel Lance became skilled at using a bo-staff that could separate into two kali sticks, and even showed a better-than-expected skill with a compound bow alongside Oliver who spent weekends joining his Pretty Bird in training until he, too, was a world-class martial artist. Before she left Starling City to continue testing her skills, and finding new fighters to learn from and defeat, she maintained she would be back for one final test.

While Laurel’s training as a fighter had been the sole province of Lady Shiva, her strength work and nutritional advice had been handled by Oliver Queen. Turns out, while he was taking a role as a higher-up in Queen Consolidated, his actual calling was split between being a vigilante, and being an excellent nutritionist\personal trainer. So, over 10 months, she had discovered a truly impressive set of abs, and what Oliver referred to as a “wholly ridiculous lower-body situation.”

Speaking of him, their relationship had gotten better ever since the first time she figured out he was the Green Arrow. They had dated, and fallen back in love, ever since. Oliver took her to all of the places that he knew, places in danger of being destroyed by progress and gentrification should their struggle to save Starling City be lost. And everywhere they went, whether it be the Moroccan or Laotian restaurants deep in the Glades or to local butcher shops in the shadow of influence, she saw the city they would need to save in sharp, and bright, focus.

Soon, Lady Shiva would return with her final test. They each had no doubt it would be the hardest thing they ever had to do. But, they would do it together. Because, when it comes to saving Starling City, the work never stops. 


	2. Appearances can be deceiving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Fight, New Suits, And A New Player. Just a typical night, because the work never stops.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

**_Five Years Ago, On the Queen’s Gambit…._ **

\--------------------------------------------------------------

(Sara’s POV)

Sara Lance was about to leave home, leave her father and her sister behind, and all she had to do to do it was lie. The best part of it was that it wasn’t even an all-the-way lie, more like a little white one.

She wasn’t going to Asia for a food tour. She would be eating plenty while she was there, she knew that much. But what she really wanted to do, honestly, was find herself. She knew what Laurel and Oliver had was like steel, and she craved that. But back home, she was nothing more than Quentin Lance’s round-heeled baby girl, and that perception of her hurt intensely every day. It didn’t help that some of her more lurid exploits had gotten back to her father, and she could swear that he was looking at her with shame in his eyes. If she did nothing else, getting away from that would be great. Everyone looking at her like she was somehow less than them hurt her more than she could bear.

But Ollie never did. Sure, he only had eyes for Laurel, but he loved Sara like a sister. So, when she told him what she needed, he was all too happy to let her on the boat and drop her off. Furthermore, he promised to lie for her. He promised to tell anyone who asked that she was going on a food tour. And then the Queen’s Gambit sank, and she was alone in the North China Sea. Soon, she saw a boat. Maybe this was destiny. Maybe it was fate. Whatever it was, this was the start to finding her true self. She just knew it.

(David Cain’s POV)

Ever since he had been released from the League of Assassins, David Cain had been looking for someone. He didn’t know if they were a man or a woman, tall or short. None of their specific physical attributes mattered to him. All he was looking for, the only thing that mattered, was someone who could help him engineer the victory no other martial artist had been able to create. He needed someone he could teach to be the equal of Lady Shiva, and then defeat her.

He had tried this gambit before. And every single time, every protégé he took on and tasked with the responsibility had failed. Some, like the Bat in Gotham, refused to kill her and instead took the chance to learn her ways and use them as his own. Others were simply overmatched and outgunned. Soon, he realized, the day would come when she wanted to settle their proxy wars personally. And when it did, when they finally battled, he wanted to be the greatest martial artist in the world. He wanted to be all that remained. So, he thought with more amusement than normal people would, he would kill his own student.

In order to do that, he needed to train someone who could beat her, but wouldn’t see the trap closing around their own neck until it was too late. To do so, he took trips to remote corners of the world to find people unused to modern social mores. It was while returning to his yacht that he saw her, floating in the water, and noticed the thing all of his proteges were lacking. Viciousness.

She was fighting against the water, against the choppy seas, like they had done something to her personally. It was that fire, and the promise of what it could do if she was focused on a goal, that intrigued him. So, showing mercy he did not usually possess, he rescued her. And from that day, as she warmed up and ate soup, he vowed to make her his best student. She needed to find herself, she told him. He needed to make her into someone else, something else.

This could be a good working relationship.

**_Meanwhile, back in Starling City at Oliver Queen’s Penthouse 5 years later…._ **

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(Laurel’s POV)

It had been a hard time, personally and professionally, for Laurel Lance for about 11 months now. Ever since she found out that Oliver Queen was the man behind the Hood, everything she knew about herself changed. First, through nothing more than kindness and pleas for help, she found herself helping him. And then, one day over breakfast, she found herself training to become a martial artist and fighter to properly help him do his work, under the tutelage of the world’s best hand-to-hand fighter Lady Shiva. That, she loved. She loved pushing herself to the absolute limit of her conditioning, and she loved how connected to her hometown, and to her family, it made her feel. Thea, Oliver’s actual sister and someone who had been the same to Laurel, had been brought in too. Turns out, she was just as good of an archer as her older brother, and was also waiting for her weapons to be made. Being smaller, she needed a bow with a lighter draw weight and also wanted a set of nunchakus made for herself.

But the other parts of “year one”, as she was thinking of it, had been an entirely different story. Ever since she had brought in, both her and Oliver had discovered that their city was being set up to be destroyed and rebuilt by the hand of someone who was leading something called the Undertaking. And one night, not too long ago actually, they ended up discovering a truth that chilled them to their bones. The man who was trying to destroy their city, who had sent his minion the Dark Archer to end them when they got too close, was their “uncle” Malcolm Merlyn. And, in an even darker coincidence, the Dark Archer was also Malcolm Merlyn.

But, knowing that and going to the FBI or INTERPOL with that knowledge were two different things. First of all, it sure wasn’t like the Black Canary or the Green Arrow were registered criminal informants. In fact, Laurel was pretty sure there would be a shoot-to-kill order placed on them before too long. Lord knows, with as much influence over the city’s elites as Malcolm Merlyn undoubtedly had, there was absolutely no possible way he couldn’t make that order come to pass. But, as she thought about it further, it seemed that he should probably steer clear of anything that made anyone question his motives.

Nonetheless, her nights were as stressful as her days were fulfilling. She still was training with anyone who could help her, a fact which led her to a former student of Lady Shiva’s by the name of Ted Grant who was only all too happy to help her stay sharp whenever her main tutor wasn’t available. It sometimes even seemed like he was a male version of Lady Shiva, right down to the gruff exterior and joy of watching her collapse to the ground after running through an endless series of katas. Oliver and Laurel had even signed up to take online criminology and forensics classes, eager to see if they could stop the criminals polluting their city’s bloodstream without having to fight ALL the time.

But, this morning, she wasn’t thinking about any of that. This morning, in her boyfriend’s penthouse, she was enjoying a berry-cinnamon Greek yogurt parfait and a chorizo, bean, and egg breakfast burrito as she reviewed her client files for the day. She made copies of everything and kept them in a safe secured to keep out the world’s greatest thieves and safecrackers, on the direct consultation of Curtis Holt.

And there, making his own breakfast which looked like a 6-egg omelet and a pina colada protein smoothie, was the absolute love of her life, Oliver Jonas Queen. She could not believe how bright her life felt with him in it, how much more fulfilled she was now. It didn’t seem honestly right, but she wanted him more and more each day.

Watching him finish preparing his breakfast, knowing he was headed to the office to check up on a few things and drop by for a surreptitious update on the status of their new suits, she found herself amused by the notion that all of this, every good thing, would never have happened if the Hood hadn’t smiled at her.

Best smile of her life, she thought.

(Oliver’s POV)

The Hood was dead, he thought. He died the night he couldn’t keep the sunshine out of his heart when he looked at the love of his life, and it was perhaps the only death that he was okay with. For five years, he had experienced death on a level no one should have to. His father, Sara, Shado, Slade (he hoped), Akio, and Taiana. But of all of those deaths, all the weight that they placed on his soul, the only one that didn’t hurt him was the death of the Hood.

The Hood was vengeance, and anger, writ large. He knew that now. The Hood was basically a vigilante who trafficked on the side of the angels. On the other hand, the Green Arrow used fear as a weapon, a thing to intimidate those who foolishly believed their money and power meant no one anywhere could scare them. But to the regular people of his city, the people who ran restaurants and bars and grocery stores, he would be their champion. He would be the man they could come to for help when the police weren’t around. He would be, alongside the Black Canary, a neighborhood figure of hope.

But as he was thinking of what he wanted, he got a text from Curtis Holt on his Queen Consolidated smartphone, which was encrypted to a level that would make the DOD blush. Instantly, he knew what it was. The new Green Arrow, and the Black Canary, had their tools ready. When he got there, Ollie knew he had to apologize for all the extra work he had made Curtis do, but he needed to be ready for any contingency.

That was why he asked for Curtis to make him a 60-arrow quiver with trick arrows that could be loaded with the simple flick of a switch, and a recurve bow made of the highest-quality metal possible. He could see it now in the back of his mind: some impossible battle against an army who would not cease attacking, and him out of arrows or with a broken bow. He didn’t want to die like that. If he did die, and not from old age, he wanted to go out fighting.

But worse than that would be to imagine Laurel fighting alongside him, only to see her run through with a sword, or shot with a gun. So, he asked Curtis to make Laurel a suit that fit everything he knew her to be. It had to be tough, but not a shapeless sack of fabric. Laurel enjoyed looking like a woman, even if she still wanted to be taken seriously as a lawyer and a combatant. So, with more skill and stealth than he realized he was capable of, he figured out what Laurel wore the most often and then snapped pictures of those fabric swatches and sent them off to Curtis.

And finally, after months of edits and re-doing, Curtis had gotten everything done. He was going to give him a hug, and sincerely apologize for the extra work he had made him put in. But first, before he did anything else, he had to tell his pretty bird about the surprise gift he had just gotten for her.

(Laurel’s POV)

Ted Grant having mastered texting is a surprise. Ted Grant texting her “We have training in 90 minutes” with all the grumpiness of someone who apparently lives on the wrong side of the bed, on the other hand, isn’t. Ted cared about her, and about every single one of his students who he trained. Whether they were high school athletes looking to stay safe, or a top-level martial artist looking to become one of the best in the world, everyone there felt safe and like learning was the actual goal. But he was never going to SAY it. It just wasn’t who he was. Him caring was shown by actions, like how he always managed to have lime Gatorade ready for Laurel after training was over after she told him that was her favorite flavor.

So, as she finished breakfast, her day looked planned. Training in the morning, then CNRI until they closed, and then nighttime patrol. Of course, the Lance\Queen combined luck meant that her day was about to take a great turn. Because as she put her plate and cup in the sink Oliver wrapped his arms around her trim waist and kissed her on the forehead.

“I got you a present” he said, warmness and kindness in his voice as he puts his plate and his blender carafe in the dishwasher. “I know that you’ve been wearing one of my old Hood suits while we got yours ready, but guess what? It’s ready. I had Curtis work double-time to make sure that it was as perfect for you as you are to me. Because, my darling, there is no doubt that you are perfect for me, and I hope my gift proves that you can be the hero this city deserves, the light and joy it needs to remember”

“When did you learn to sweet-talk like this? Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It’s just…. You weren’t like this before the island” she says, eager to find out what in him changed. She knew he wouldn’t fall back to the cocky playboy he had been, but she just wanted to know why.

“Those 5 years away were 5 years where nothing good happened, nothing at all. And there were more days than I’d like to admit where I just thought of putting an arrow in myself and making all the pain stop. But every time it got that dark, every time I could barely strain to hear the little voice in my head that told me it was all going to be OK; your voice was the only voice I heard. Telling me I had to make it through this, to come home to you, was the strength I needed. So, if I’m kinder and more affectionate than I was, that’s why. I know what I almost lost, and I’d move heaven-and-earth to make sure you never forget how much I love you.”

Feeling the beginnings of tears leaving her eyes, Laurel Lance forces herself not to cry. She has new makeup on, and she is not about to let it run.

“Let’s go pick up my gift”. But as they go and leave to do exactly that, a throwing dart with a note embedded in its hilt landed on the wall of their balcony.

(Oliver’s POV)

It had to be Shiva. No one else who knew their secret identities, and that list was as painfully small as he could keep it, would have thrown a note to them with this much ceremony to it. Thea and Diggle would have just shown up. He was 99% sure the Dark Archer didn’t know, and even if he did, he imagined another dare over television airwaves would have been how he chose to ask for a rematch. No, this was Shiva. So, with that in mind, he read the note.

“To Laurel Lance and the Green Arrow,

I left you with the promise that I would return for one more test. Today is that test. I have reason to believe that my mortal enemy, David Cain, has found a new pupil who personally knows both you and whoever it is underneath the Green Arrow’s hood. Regardless, he has sought a battle with you and the Green Arrow. In this spirit, I have been granted the favor of telling you the location. While you are dealing with this challenge, I will take over the role of the Black Canary and keep your city safe from harm. The woman who is Artemis has assured me she will also take up the mantle of the Green Arrow for this situation. The location is attached.”

Knowing they have no choice; Oliver makes phone calls to postpone all board meetings for Queen Consolidated while Laurel calls in sick to CNRI. Before they go to their duel, though, they head to their parking garage and call Curtis and John Diggle. After all, they do still have to get their presents.

**_Several Hours Later at A Warehouse in The Glades…._ **

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(David Cain and Sara Lance’s POV)

Five years. Five years where all they did was train and study, for this exact moment. They ate to train more. They slept to prepare their bodies and minds for more, and harder, training. Everything that they had done was to get them to this moment.

And now, David Cain and his student, the Orange Dragon, waited for their battle. Defeat of these two, regarded by Lady Shiva herself as her top students, would absolutely lead to Lady Shiva’s surrender. They just knew it.

Then why did Sara feel so wrong being home? This was just where the battle was being held, right? Nothing more than that.

Right?

**_Meanwhile, on the Easley Bridge…._ **

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(Laurel’s POV)

She opened the suitcase Curtis Holt had given Oliver for her, and her jaw literally hit the floor. In all of her dreams of what she would have looked like, nothing like this ever registered.

First, it was black and purple. Violet, really, if she was being honest. It was leather, but somehow had more heft to it and strength than anything she had felt before. It also felt like a unified thing, instead of a shirt and pants put together. But it wasn’t a sack of fabric with no femininity to it, no curve. Curtis had managed to make body armor look like fishnets, and he had put it everywhere a bladed weapon might find accessible. This had the dual effect of both calling attention to her natural curves and giving her something that would keep her safe as she patrolled her city. Here, despite all her training, was the first time she could really say to herself: “I am Laurel Lance, and I am the Black Canary.” But her exultation was short-lived. This was a big fight, and if she was too happy, she might get hurt… or worse.

(Oliver’s POV)

Hot damn, Laurel looked amazing. He’d have to show his appreciation again and again when they got back from this. For his part, he felt like the archer he should have always been. This was a bow made of a carbon-fiber and tungsten blend, making it as close to unbreakable as could be gotten. Right now, he was testing the balance by grabbing a tiny quiver he kept with practice arrows for exactly this purpose. It was perfect. Curtis had really outdone himself here.

With that done, Oliver strapped on his “working quiver” as he was thinking of it. The shoulder straps were silk, and the arrows were magnetized and designed to be loaded into a chamber at the top of the bag. Each arrow was designed to be fired as a regular sharp arrow and a “specialty” arrow, everything from a high-tension cable to an arrow loaded with a fast-acting tranquilizer. Curtis had even managed to load something called a boxing glove arrow, which looked like an arrow that had an actual boxing glove attached to the head. There was a manual waiting in his e-mails at home with full detailed plans on how everything was supposed to go. Right now, though, no e-mails could be read. This was a war they were walking into, or driving into. He needed to get into that frame of mind, and so did Laurel.

And then, he saw it. Right in the middle of the bridge, road flares in orange and black. This was the signal. The battle was now joined.

**_At the Warehouse…._ **

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Soon, the van pulled up to the warehouse. They had not been interfered with, or prevented from arriving here in any way. That would be a dishonor, and defeat the whole purpose of the duel besides.

Out of the van stepped the Green Arrow, in a neon-green archer’s suit with a tungsten bow nocked with a trick arrow and a look of utter disdain on his face. To his right, by his side as she would always be, was the Black Canary in a perfect hapkido stance with a similar look of annoyance. They were being drug from their appointed rounds, their **_RESPONSIBLITIES,_** for this foolish duel. They resented it, and their resentment meant that they wanted nothing more than to see this ended quickly.

“David Cain, you have failed this city” screamed Oliver Queen, his voice carrying a depth of anger Laurel had never heard. “Your presence here is unwelcome, and **_YOU WILL LOSE_**.”

And with that, the battle was on. The Green Arrow dropped his bow and quiver, realizing this was supposed to be a hand-to-hand battle between two martial artists and not an archery duel. He had recently gone through one of those, and didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as he thought he might. So, with more joy than people might have thought appropriate, he got down to work. Soon, he was trading casting punches, backfists, elbows, and kicks with someone who seemed to know every counter he could think of, and even developed some of his own on the fly. Truly, whoever this David Cain was, he was a truly great fighter.

Meanwhile, the Black Canary was having a very similar experience. Whoever this woman was, covered head-to-toe in Valencia-orange and white and wearing an opera mask of the same color scheme, she appeared to know and mimic the way Laurel moved like she had been around her all her life. It soon dawned on her that nothing she could try would work. Laurel would try a capoeira-esque handstand kick and this mysterious fighter knew the counter.

Eventually, though, class told. The Green Arrow finally timed David Cain and then proceeded to catch him with a blow to the inside of his kneecap followed by another one to the outside, hobbling him just long enough for a crane kick to the face that ended matters. Flipping his hood off of his face, Oliver Queen smiled. That took forever. Now to see if Laurel needed any help.

As it turned out, she too had figured out the problem. She needed to throw combinations, in hopes that her opponent could not possibly time them ALL. But as she landed the final blow in a hook kick\backfist\front kick combination, she noticed the opera mask of her opponent fell off. And both Oliver and Laurel were stunned.

“Sara?”

And for her part, Sara Lance knew instantly. The leather-clad woman she was fighting was her own sister, and the archer had been Ollie.

They couldn’t fight anymore, not after this. They needed to talk.

**_A few minutes later…._ **

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David Cain had been carrying drugs, as it turned out. He was planning on planting them on both the Green Arrow and the Black Canary, to get them off of the board for good. Even in their first year as heroes, they had many powerful enemies to their credit. Putting them in jail, even if it was federal prison, would absolutely mean their deaths.

So, they just twisted his plan. They kept the drugs on him, and hug him with a net arrow from a nearby lamppost and then had Curtis Holt drop an anonymous tip.

Meanwhile, Sara, Laurel, and Oliver talked. It came to pass that Sara still felt like she needed to find herself, only now without her teacher there to guide her path.

But before she left, she told Laurel and Oliver something each, something meant only for them.

She told Oliver, “Don’t let your knowledge of fear become an excuse to define yourself by providing it. There’s a lightness in you, a joy, and there always has been. Don’t ignore it.”

As for Laurel, Sara said “Fight for the little guy. There are women in this city who have suffered horrible pain. Make those men suffer. But also remember, you have a responsibility to show this city what a good man is. Go public about how much you love Oliver, and how much things have changed.”

And with that, she left. Would they see her again? Who knew?

**_Meanwhile, in a high-rise in Brisbane….._ **

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A man in a suit sat and watched a security camera feed from the warehouse. His hands, massive and scarred, clenched and unclenched in fury. His eyes, or at least the one not covered by a leather eyepatch, seemed fixed on the two people sitting on the floor of the warehouse.

“Oliver Queen, and his birdie Laurel Lance” said Slade Wilson, his fury calmed enough to speak. “I suppose it’s time to keep my promise. And when you see me, when you see me again, I will break everything you love.”


	3. Empty Quiver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tonight, the Green Arrow and the Black Canary fight.... but how it ends is anyone's guess.

Empty Quiver.

(Author’s Note: Even though this is S1, the particle accelerator has gone off. Laurel having powers is key to this story. Also, this story takes place 8 months after Chapter 2.)

**_At the Bunker……._ **

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There were days when Oliver Queen wanted a vacation. He had just busted a drug ring with satellite operations in 3 states, and put the head of said drug ring on the radar of INTERPOL which he knew meant all the major law enforcement agencies in the world would now be fighting to see who could arrest this world-class drug smuggler. But that work was exhausting, and with Laurel still out after the particle accelerator exploded in Central City where she was for a best practices conference on evidence gathering but on her way back with what she was calling a “present”, he wanted nothing more than to be on a beach somewhere in Tahiti drinking virgin pina coladas and swimming every day. But the hero he had to be could never be someone who vacationed. The work never stopped, after all. It was not a burden he loved, but one he always understood.

But while waiting, he could test out some new toys he had been given. In exchange for besting David Cain, Lady Shiva, their trainer, had delivered some gifts. He was threatened, on pain of a particularly slow and bloody death, to not open the one for the Black Canary. But for him there were new arrowhead attachments, the most interesting of which were ones designed to mimic the ancient smoke grenades used by ninja during the Tokugawa shogunate period. He knew there would be a good use for these, as that final battle with Merlyn and whatever forces he could cobble together was coming sooner than he might like. Even though he had sworn never to kill again, the Dark Archer was pushing him as far as he wanted to be pushed. It seemed like, any day now, the war would arrive. While he was waiting for that day, he would train Thea in hand-to-hand combat the way Lady Shiva had requested, with the drills she had left behind. He didn’t know anything about the status of her bow, so that was something he needed to check on so that he could train her in shooting, arrow husbandry, and all the skills he had earned.

The main thing right now, though? He needed Laurel to come back.

**_At a high-rise in downtown Starling City……_ **

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(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

Malcolm Merlyn could feel that the end was near. Not for him, though. He was confident that his skills, and all the resources he was relying on, would be enough to carry the day. Add to that the fact that he knew who the Green Arrow, and for that matter the Black Canary, actually WERE and things were looking up.

How that happened was a combination of absolute dumb luck, and his own general ingenuity. When they last met, Malcolm had noticed something. While he couldn’t figure out who had taught him to shoot, the Green Arrow’s hand-to-hand combat skills were seriously reminiscent of Lady Shiva. Reminiscent to the point where it was past a coincidence, honestly. So, he got to work. He leaned on the intelligence cells of the League to see if Sandra Woo-San, or any of her lesser-known aliases, had shown their faces in Starling City. Turns out she had, and had been spending a lot of time both at the Wildcat Gym on Alexander and Jones as well as a Queen Consolidated penthouse. So, honestly, it didn’t take him too long to put it together.

He supposed, to people not as used to combat as he was, that hiring the world’s foremost hand-to-hand combat specialist to train a rich playboy in how to defend himself would seem like EXACTLY the sort of overkill the Queens would be engaged in. And, if he was being honest with himself, that was where the old him would have stopped. The new Malcolm, the one awoken to the true ways of the world? That one knew better. And once he figured out who the Green Arrow was, the Black Canary was even easier. Oliver Queen went nowhere, did nothing, without Dinah Laurel Lance by his side.

So, he would have the final battle. He would use theatricality and deception, because they were powerful and useful tools, to get them both on a battlefield of his choosing. And then, when they were broken and beaten as his feet, he would make them truly suffer. He would make them watch as he took their city from them.

That, he thought as he sipped from a glass of brandy, was true victory.

**_Back in the Bunker…._ **

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As Curtis Holt walked Thea Queen through her new bow and the trick arrows that he gave her, Oliver Queen felt a swell of pride course through him. He knew Thea had made the same promise to never go out on patrol looking to take lives, to be the monsters they were fighting, and it made him proud to know the degree with which his father would be proud of them. They were taking criminals off of the List now, but also dealing in ensuring that everyone who was polluting their city knew what it was like to feel fear. But and this he was equally proud of; the city was beginning to trust them. Instead of running away from the Hood like they had been once, they were running TO the Green Arrow and his partners. Oliver could be forgiven for thinking things were going perfectly, and in some ways, they were.

Still, though, he knew the Dark Archer would be waiting. And as he grabbed his bow and 60-arrow quiver, making sure to grab the 24 flechettes he kept on his person at all times, he heard the sound of the bunker opening and he smiled. Because, standing in the entranceway, was his Laurel. He knew she probably wouldn’t mind being called that, but he wasn’t dumb enough to say it out loud and see if he was wrong.

But as she got closer, he noticed there was something different about her. Gone was the cute young lawyer who wore her work attire down to the bunker. This new Laurel? This was a BADASS. She came in with a pixie cut of short blonde hair, a black leather jacket, a Ministry t-shirt with rips in some very **interesting** places, and blue jeans that looked painted on. But her smile, and the warmth that radiated off of her? That was still her. This look, though? He admitted to liking this look a LOT.

There was something else about her, too. He noticed that she was carrying her suit bag, and looked like she had a black necklace around her throat.

What had HAPPENED in Central City?

**_5 Months Ago, in Central City…._ **

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(Laurel’s POV)

Laurel Lance had gone to Central City for a regional conference on best practices in evidence gathering, and after she returned to her mid-cost hotel room every night, she was struck by just how much new and fascinating information there was on what she thought was a pretty cut-and-dry thing. But and this was just as important, she was also here to get some advanced training in martial arts. Ted Grant had told her about a man named Richard Diaz, who went by the nom de plume “The Dragon” and was as skilled a fighter as Lady Shiva herself from what he had led her to believe.

And so, with the limited time she had before her conferences started, Laurel went to this “Dragon” and learned all new skills, including martial arts from Indonesia and Vietnam as well as stick fighting. But while she was in Central City, she also visited her mother Dinah, who had returned to her maiden name and was a history professor. It felt good to see her again, and to know that whatever had happened with her and her father, her mother was at peace. That felt good.

And seeing her mother be at peace, she wanted to feed something in herself that she had only started to notice from the 1st time she threw a kick in anger. After all, every time she went into the darker parts of the Glades, she had this gnawing sense that people thought she didn’t belong there. And if she was being honest with herself, she saw it. Ever since Sara had gotten onto that boat, she had always tried to look like a respectable corporate lawyer even though she hadn’t taken that job in San Francisco. And while that did help, some, with the idea that her clients would look at her as serious and professional, it did always make her feel like she didn’t really belong in that neighborhood. Like she was an interloper, or a gentrifier, and that was a feeling she hated more than she could say. So, on the last night of the conference, she went to a local pharmacy, and a vintage clothing store near her hotel, and she hatched a plan.

First, she cut her hair into a pixie cut and let her hair color return to its natural blonde. She had become a brunette because she couldn’t let herself be compared to her sister, Sara, anymore. But now that she knew Sara was ok, traveling the world finding herself and doing justice for those who could not rely on law enforcement or vigilantes, she felt the freedom to let her hair back to the way it was. And then, the clothes. She knew she could wear whatever she wanted now. CNRI was informal that way. But as she got dressed, something else dawned on her. She looked… good. Like, she objectively knew she dressed well, and that her new training regimen meant she had availed herself of Curtis Holt’s tailoring skills more times than was perhaps appropriate. But this? This felt right.

And so, as she double-checked her luggage to make sure she was properly packed, she suddenly looked up and saw a yellow wave of pure energy approaching her entirely too fast. She screamed, as one would do, and then crumbled to the ground. That was the last thing she remembered, until she woke up at STAR Labs. She discovered she had powers, and then booked it for a train ride back home. If she trusted **_ANYONE_** to help her get those powers under some kind of control, it was Oliver and the rest of QC.

**_In the Bunker…._ **

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(Oliver’s POV)

With his Laurel back, they got down to the business of heading out on patrol. Laurel was headed over to the Koreatown neighborhood to try and figure out the rumors that had begun to circulate about a sex trafficking ring that was getting started under the noses of the 51st precinct, while Oliver was headed to the South End to stop a drug shipment coming in from China. All things being equal, it was just another normal night. And as they got dressed, Oliver grabbing a kusarigama from the armory while Laurel went with her usual bo-staff, they assumed things were about to be equal.

But as soon as they finished dressing, Curtis Holt’s shrieks of alarm draw their attention to him and the databases he kept.

“Guys, there’s an army of dudes standing at each end of the Easley Bridge. And they look like they want to fight.” said Curtis, taking a deep breath after outlining the problems.

“Mr. Holt, get John down here. Send him over to the South End to break the drug ring, and have Artemis run intel in Koreatown. While they’re doing that, I need you to fabricate me 60 more arrows. After I’m done with this, we’re seeing the Dark Archer. This whole thing, all of it, ends tonight” said Oliver, grabbing his tungsten bow from its resting place with a growl of absolute disgust.

“Every other Tuesday, we go to war. And the one thing that all wars have in common? They end.” And with that, Laurel joins her boyfriend, and her partner in justice. They have a job to do, and an army to fight. Woe betide anyone who gets in their way.

**_At the Easley Bridge……._ **

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Realizing what was about to happen, Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance were somewhat heartened to realize that the Starling City Police Department, and for that matter the State Police, had quickly figured out precisely how out of their depth they were and were focusing all of their attention on crowd control. From the looks of things, this army appeared to be mercenaries of some high quality. Turning on the 4K-quality video cameras in their suits, the Green Arrow and the Black Canary were informed that the troops in front of them were a combination of former South Korean troops from the 9th Special Forces Brigade, former members of the Greek Army’s 1st Infantry Division, and Brigade 70 from the Cambodian national army. Suffice it to say, these were highly trained and highly schooled mercenaries that they were expected to fight through. But, it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if Superman himself was standing there. There were people there, people who worked on the bridge in hot-dog carts and small food trucks, and they didn’t deserve to be intimidated or have their businesses ruined. So it would end now.

Checking the balance on his bow, and grabbing his kusarigama while Laurel grabbed her bo-staff, they glanced at each other and were setting the rules of engagement on the fly. No one was going to die tonight, that was always clear. But the urgent-care units at Northwest Hospital and Krieg Memorial Hospital were about to suddenly find themselves overwhelmed with hospitalizations.

And so, the brawl began. Before too long, the Green Arrow had used Olympic-level accuracy on his shots, well-timed blows with his kusari-gama, and elite-level hapkido, wing chun, and pencak silat to get his way to the midpoint of the bridge where he climbed up a helpfully placed ladder and set himself up in a hastily organized sniper’s position. But as he looked closer, he realized that wasn’t needed. Laurel had, somehow, managed to become an even better fighter. She was walking through the best of all of these fighters, sometimes even using their own tactics against them, until she made her way to the middle of the bridge herself.

“Pretty Bird. Up here” Oliver hollered, and Laurel made her way up the ladder. Together, they looked down at the wrecked mercenary force and signaled the police to come and arrest the mercenaries. The work of Starling City’s protectors was not done, after all. Nowhere close.

**_Back at the Merlyn Global Headquarters……_ **

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Malcolm Merlyn guessed, by the lack of a phone call from one of his many informants stashed throughout Starling City, that the Green Arrow and the Black Canary were making their way here. He had heard about the men who met them at the Easley Bridge, and knew there was no way that they would be at their best after fighting an army that big. He also knew he didn’t arrange that army to show up.

But you didn’t get anywhere in business or in life by not taking advantage of the opportunities someone else gave you. Whoever it was who had tried to distract his enemies had given him time to put together his own contingency plans, namely the small splinter group of the League of Assassins called the Longbow Hunters. If not for the fact that doing such a thing was a certain way to get an arrowhead through the eye if he was ever discovered, he was amused at the notion that he had been able to plot his way around the seemingly immortal head of the League of Assassins. It fit his old league name, Al-Saher, to be able to show someone something with one hand while pulling a much more complicated trick with the other.

And then his head of security called. John Fuqua was a habitually sober man and a former member of the French Counter-Terrorism unit GIGN, thus making him someone who could quite obviously handle himself. So, when his phone rang, and he heard that the Green Arrow and the Black Canary were standing outside demanding a battle before he was apparently knocked unconscious, it made him realize that he had run out of time. He’d have to fight, here and now.

**_Outside Merlyn Global…………._ **

……………………………………………………

As the Green Arrow and the Black Canary stood at the front door to the Merlyn Global World Headquarters, they were wholly prepared to make sure this ended. While walking here, they had found themselves set on by small units apparently from the same mercenary corps and found themselves being forced to dip further and further into their bag of tricks to make their way through it all. Luckily, Curtis Holt had finished fabricating another 60 arrows so that Oliver could reload. But what that ended up meaning is that by the time Oliver and Laurel got to their main location, they were more tired than they wished to be.

But soon, they realized they weren’t alone. And it wasn’t just the rent-a-thugs and low-quality security guards standing at the front door that gave them the hint. Honestly, if that was all it was, they would have been really eager to walk through them. But it was the men in black standing there, men who looked very much like they were the League of Assassins, and a smirking Dark Archer on the rooftop that made them realize that making this end was going to be a bit harder than they thought it would be.

But then, nothing worth doing was ever easy. And so, the fight began. The rent-a-thugs and security guys fell first, felled by high-level martial arts and more than a few well-timed blows with kali sticks or a tonfa. But as the Green Arrow and the Black Canary stood at the entrance to the building, standing side by side, they noticed idly that they were surrounded. Even now, they decided to count.

“12?” Laurel said, glancing around at the army that surrounded them.

“Please. No less than 10” Oliver said, reaching back and nocking an arrow while Laurel separated her bo-staff into two kali sticks.

“Are we seriously here, figuring out how many moves it’s going to take to get through all these people?” Laurel smiles, nonetheless getting into a fighting stance.

“Winner buys dinner?” Oliver said with a smile, and Laurel nodded her agreement.

Soon, the fight began. And unlike on the bridge, when they were fresh and focused, the work they had done to get to this point meant they weren’t as capable of pulling their blows as they would have liked. Bones were broken, people were thrown into walls and through glass window treatments. Unlike the bridge, which was graceful with an undercurrent of raw violence, this was not that. This was viciousness.

Finally, getting to the roof, Oliver and Laurel took a moment to catch their breath. Laurel’s bo-staff was hung back over her shoulder, as she had appropriated a pair of tonfas along the way and found those more useful for the sort of close-range combat she had found herself in. For his part, Oliver was unable to use that same trick. After all, his arrows were custom-fabricated for his bow and his alone. He supposed that he could have scavenged for the arrows from the bowmen he had waylaid to get here, but he didn’t need to. After all, he had the ideas behind preserving as many arrows as he possibly could down. So, when he put his bow on his back next to his quiver, he knew he had more than enough arrows to get done what he needed to.

Despite knowing that, a small part of him wasn’t able to forget the vicious beating both he and Laurel had suffered over Christmas from Malcolm Merlyn. It had brought them closer together, and helped to make them realize just how untrained they were. Tonight, though, tonight was about revenge. But what Oliver and Laurel knew, and would keep secret to the bitter end, is that they had found out where Merlyn had kept the two Markov devices and had already tasked Curtis Holt and John Diggle to make sure they were destroyed.

“Here we are, Merlyn. You wanted us? Here we are. Tonight, it ends. Where’s the detonator for the Undertaking? Where are the devices?” Oliver screamed, trying his best to keep the smile out of his voice as he received a text on one of his wrist gauntlets that they had disabled both devices.

“It doesn’t matter where I kept them, Mr. Queen. You’ll be too dead to reach them.” And with that, Malcolm Merlyn charges and an archery duel immediately breaks out as Laurel darts in and out with quick bursts of kicks and open-hand punches as well as combination attempts with her tonfas. Eventually, though, Oliver glances at Laurel and ducks down to fire a cable arrow that wraps around Malcolm’s legs at the exact moment Laurel leaps over the top of him with a jumping inside double heel kick right to the chin that sends the Dark Archer staggering before he is tied up with another cable arrow. Right then, at that moment, all of their energy left. Fighting Merlyn took just about all they had, and they know it. They have enough energy to get off of this roof, and then to collapse in the bunker for sleeping and perhaps a Henry Fyff-administered IV.

Walking down the stairs, making sure all the mercenaries and assassins who they fought on the way up are still unconscious on the way down, the Green Arrow and the Black Canary smile and share an exhausted kiss in the lobby.

At that exact moment, Oliver Queen feels a man grab his shooting arm and squeeze with force he didn’t know anyone could possess. Turning around to look up he sees the figure in his nightmares, the man he thought was dead, Slade Wilson.

“You and me, kid. Like old times” Slade said to a shell-shocked Oliver before applying even more force until he felt the tear in his bicep of his shooting arm, and then the crack of a broken forearm. Writhing in pain, Oliver tried desperately to warn Laurel off but he couldn’t get words to leave his mouth. Fighting desperately, with skill she had never needed to use before, Laurel began to back Slade up, but realized it was all too easy a half-a-second before a perfect low kick to the shin broke Laurel’s tibia. Screaming in pain as she turned to see who it was Oliver’s mouth dropped open, even as tears of anger and hurt left his eyes, as Shado’s identical twin Mei Gulong stood next to Slade and smiled with hatred in her eyes as Oliver and Laurel passed out in the Merlyn Global lobby, only to be saved by John Diggle and Curtis Holt.

Laurel and Oliver had lost. When they were so close to winning, they had lost. Slade had won. And in their last thoughts before falling into unconsciousness, they wondered: What was next?


	4. Proper Preparation

Proper Preparation.

(Author’s Note: This story takes place right after the events of Empty Quiver.)   
  


But as the Green Arrow and the Black Canary lay broken in the lobby of Merlyn Global, Slade Wilson and Mei Gulong didn’t just leave. No, that wouldn’t be enough pain. Slade knew, believed in his very soul, that Oliver deserved to suffer thoroughly for what he had done. And as he watched him and his bird unconscious, and with broken bones, he knew what he needed to do. He, and her sister Mei, could never have Shado back. Oliver’s selfishness had ensured that. But they were going to make him pay for that. If they did nothing else on this night after breaking him and the one woman he proclaimed to love, they would ensure his city thought of him as he really was: weak and easily defeated.

So they dumped both him, and the Black Canary, into the back of a Volkswagen van and headed to Starling City Police Plaza. And while Mei drove, Slade unmasked the Black Canary and smiled. Of course it was his girl, that Laurel Lance. Of course she was with him. No matter. He’d break her too, and remind her of the foolishness of her choice.

Walking in through the front door of the Starling City Police Plaza, dropping the Green Arrow and the Black Canary on the tile floor like so much garbage, Slade walked off as the officers thought for a moment, and made a surreptitious phone call to the people they knew as “tech support” for the Green Arrow and the Black Canary.

“The battle’s just begun, kid. And this time, you’re not winning. You’re dying” growled Slade, even though he knew Oliver couldn’t **POSSIBLY** hear him.

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

He had known, on an intellectual level, that being tech support for vigilantes meant that he would see them suffer pain and injury. Lord knows, he had been happier than normal when Henry Fyff created the custom-made mouthpieces for the Green Arrow and the Black Canary that helped ensure that they wouldn’t lose any teeth or suffer any facial or dental injuries that would show up in their civilian lives. But bruises, contusions, and cuts both large and small? That he expected. And for the most part, he understood. He had helped Henry patch up cuts, do stitches, and other general work. And honestly, he liked helping that way. He remembered, from his time as an Olympic decathlete, what it looked and felt like to hurt for a task you thought noble.

But when he stumbled on the heroes of Starling City in the lobby of the hub of Starling City’s police, and that’s precisely what they were to not just him but everyone who lived in the city, the thing he saw was the last thing that he expected. The Green Arrow and the Black Canary lay there, smaller than they had ever been, and looked broken and defeated in a way that he could have never imagined. Sure, some bad actors had escaped their justice before. But this was different. This was a mauling. It didn’t help that John Diggle, perhaps the bravest man he had known and a three-tour veteran of Afghanistan, looked similarly ashen and shaken.

So, seeing the Green Arrow with a broken arm and the Black Canary with a broken leg, Curtis Holt did the only thing he thought logical in the moment. He found an office plant and he puked in it. But as his fear cleared, he realized something: If whoever had done this to Oliver and Laurel was still out there, who could stop him? Who would even want to try?

**_9 months later……_ **

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For Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance, it had been an exceedingly dark 6 months. When they returned to the bunker, unconscious and in tremendous pain, John Diggle had done field medicine on their broken bones until Curtis and the rest of Team Arrow’s “tech support” could figure out some way for them to receive medical support and surgery. Turned out, STAR Labs had a satellite facility in Starling City and a doctor there, Naomi Singh, who was only all too happy to assist Henry Fyff with repairing the injuries of the masked vigilantes.

But when the rest of the support staff tried to find out who the man and woman were who crippled Oliver and Laurel, the Green Arrow refused. Reminiscing about what happened to him on that island was the most painful part of his time away, and he didn’t want to have to tell the story twice. But eventually, after they finished their physical therapy, Oliver decided to tell the story. He wanted everyone here, especially Laurel, to listen intently. There was absolutely no way he was going to tell the story twice, considering how much pain and death he had to suffer through while he was away.

“When I was on Lian Yu, I was taken care of by someone named Yao Fei. He was a former general in the Chinese army, and he taught me the basics of what I needed to survive. He taught me how to live off the land if I needed to, and in those first months, I needed to. He also taught me how to use a bow, even if I wasn’t nearly as good at it as I am now. But eventually, he got captured and had to turn against me to save the lives of those important to him. I escaped, with his permission, and found someone to help me. That someone was Slade Wilson.

He’s a former member of Australian Special Intelligence, a former member of the 1st Commando Regiment in the Australian Army, and a trained martial artist. If you were looking for someone to train you how to fight, and how to survive, the Slade I knew was the perfect guy. Eventually, we got to a place where we could have escaped. But in order to do that, we would have had to have blown the whole island up and killed Yao Fei. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t come home and be the same selfish jerk I was when I left, because then that meant my father’s sacrifice was meaningless. Eventually, we did save Yao Fei but that meant saving his daughter, Shado, too. Shado, it turned out, could fight and take care of herself as well as Slade and I could.

Over the next year I was on Lian Yu, Slade and I became brothers. I found out he was a single father and that his wife died in childbirth giving birth to his sons. Slade and Shado began to flirt with each other, although I think that was more due to being trapped on a deserted island than true feelings of intimacy. And then it all went to hell. Apparently, there was some buried super-cure on the Island. We found it, and had to use it to save Slade’s life after he got shot and burned by pirates who were looking for it. After that, Shado and I decided to try and get off the island by grabbing the submarine the pirates had taken. In the midst of all of that, Shado took a bullet for me.

Slade saw that, and saw me crying over her, and came to the exact wrong conclusion. He thought I pined for her, and loved her, when the only person I loved was Laurel. He vowed to break me, to ruin me, as my selfishness had ruined Shado’s, and his, life. That’s where I got most of my scars, and my dragon tattoo. I escaped, and I thought I killed him by putting an arrow through his eye. Turns out I didn’t.”

Taking a breath, weeping openly as the pain of saying what he did clearly hurt more than he acknowledged it might, Oliver was stunned when he felt the arms of Laurel Lance around him. They had been broken by his sins, by his mistakes, and yet she still loved him and still supported him.

“But who was that woman, Ollie? The woman who was with him?” Laurel asked, and this he knew was going to be a more complicated explanation.

“I wasn’t always on Lian Yu. After I left the submarine, I woke up and found myself an unwilling agent of a black-budget secret government organization. The things they made me do, the person I had to become until I could get my way out of that, will always haunt me. But while I was in that organization, I found Shado’s identical twin sister Mei. She looks like her, moves like her, and fought like her. But I never told her anything, anything at all, about how her sister died. I think Slade found her, told her what happened, and convinced her that I needed to pay, and so did you, Laurel.”

Getting to her feet, and hobbling over to her boyfriend, Laurel hugs him tighter.

“You suffered five years of unimaginable pain, baby. Five years of things no one should have to feel, and you will never have to carry that pain alone ever again. We’ll beat Slade, and Shado’s twin. I don’t care how long it takes, but we’re going to do it. And we’re going to do it together” says the Black Canary, and in this moment, the Green Arrow feels a bit more confident about things.

But as she hugs him, Laurel remembers she needs to tell her own secret.

“When I was in Central City, and the particle accelerator happened, I got powers. I was going to use them against Merlyn, but we never needed to. And I should have used them against Slade and Mei, but I was too panicked to do anything but worry about you. Do you think we can find a place so we can see what I can do?”

**_Later on that day, at a secret Queen Consolidated research facility….._ **

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(Oliver’s POV)

Well, that was new. Laurel stood in the middle of the facility, surrounded by every piece of highly tuned scientific equipment that she could think of, and just…. Screamed. And when she did, he could see the sound waves leaving her mouth and the dummy they set up slowly crumble into a mass of plastic as she literally was loud enough to break bones. If she hadn’t been so terrified, so in pain that her brain went straight into survival mode, this could have been terribly useful. As it was, it would be the key to beating Slade and Mei when they fought again. Because they would, he knew that. Slade and Mei didn’t seem like the sort of people who would do what they did, and then just leave town. That wouldn’t **HURT** enough.

So, with the aid of warm tea laden with rich cardamom-infused honey, Oliver made sure that Laurel screamed all day long. He wanted her to train this like she trained re-chambering a side kick, or how he trained to become a more accurate and quicker shot until drawing, nocking, and firing was as simple as breathing might be. He had watched her suffer, before he passed out from his own pain, and he knew watching her pain, and being helpless to do anything about it, was worse. That was never going to happen again, as long as he had the strength and\or skill to do anything about it.

But that meant, when the fight came, he was going to have to deal with Slade. He had learned enough about his former brother to remember all the fighting styles he had shown aptitude in, and how he seemed to be able to think his way through a fight with tremendous ease. Plus, and this part was crucial, Slade had done something to him that no one had. Not the Dark Archer, or Firefly, or anyone. Slade Wilson scared him. And unless he could beat that, he didn’t think he stood a chance.

(Laurel’s POV)

Laurel knew this scream, which she was beginning to think of as the Canary Cry in her head, was a weapon Slade and Mei had no knowledge of. But, and this hurt to think of, it wasn’t going to be enough. Curtis Holt had been able to find security video of Mei Gulong fighting a biker gang and some local thugs and roughnecks in a bar in the Glades. She moved with a grace, and a sensuousness, that made it seem like she was literally more liquid than human. It wasn’t so much speed, it was agility and acceleration. She broke bones, tore ligaments, and gave out concussions like they were candy bars and did it all like she was dancing the tango.

Laurel had trained herself to become a world-class martial artist, but Mei Gulong had been born to it. That fact, the clarity of that difference, left the Black Canary with a choice. She could either surrender to it, and accept that she might never win. Or, she could train the skills Mei had never actually seen her use.

While she knew Oliver was scared of fighting Slade again, Laurel was looking forward to fighting Mei. This was going to end. They were going to make sure of that. But in order to do that, the Black Canary had to use her OTHER superpower. She had to make Ollie believe in himself again.

**_The Next Morning at the Queen Consolidated Penthouse……_ **

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Oliver Queen was sleepwalking, although not in the literal sense. Ever since Slade broke his arm, he had been struggling with this feeling that there was something wrong with him, something wrong with his choice to be the Green Arrow.

So, as he ate his breakfast of steel-cut oatmeal loaded with fresh berries and an omelet with onions, peppers, bacon, and spinach, Oliver felt this soul-deep emptiness in his chest. For the first time, he didn’t want to put his bow on and defend the city. He knew he had to, knew there were people out there who relied upon his strength to keep the monsters that populated every dark corner of the city at bay. But if he didn’t feel strong himself, what was the point?

At this moment, Dinah Laurel Lance walked into his point of view and he realized. She was the point. He had gotten into this because of his father, and stayed in it because the look of pride on her face when she figured out the man she loved was helping to save the city she loved was the best feeling he had ever had. And if she looked at him with joy in his heart, and if she wasn’t afraid, he wouldn’t be either. Slade had no idea what he had done, what his beating of him had unleashed. He would show the will to fight back, to be the hero his city deserved.

Slade Wilson and Mei Gulong had failed Shado’s memory. It was past time they paid for it.


	5. And So Our Armies Are Replenished

And So Our Armies Are Replenished.

(Author’s Note: This is not the final chapter of this story. It might feel like it, but it isn’t. Also, imagine we don’t see every mission the Green Arrow and the Black Canary go on. Suffice it to say, this is how they’re dealing with the confrontation with Slade and Mei.)

**_At the Foundry’s Archery Range…._ **

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(Oliver’s POV)

Oliver Queen remembered the first time he picked up the carbon fiber longbow Yao Fei had taught him with. Admittedly, that first day on the island, he was an absolutely abominable shot. But over time, and with training the likes of which no one should ever really need, he became as accurate as the great archers of the past had been. He believed that, should he find himself in a situation where he needed to, he could go shot-for-shot with Howard Hill, or Minamoto no Tametomo. Sure, he wasn’t about to sink an entire ship with one arrow like Minamoto had done, but he supposed that if he needed to, he could. And after breaking up what felt like his 50th straight drug ring, he realized he needed to up his game again. Slade and Mei would be coming back, if they weren’t already here just waiting in the shadows, and he needed something bigger and better to finally defeat them with.

So, with that in mind, in front of the Green Arrow, a choice stood. And unlike that time where he was making pancakes for Laurel and couldn’t decide to make her blueberry or chocolate chip pancakes, he couldn’t just decide both and be done with it. He needed a new bow, so he had given two choices.

Many a weekend had been spent at the Queen Consolidated factories, going through prototypes with Curtis Holt until he found the perfect one. It was never explained what was done with the ones that weren’t the proper 45-pound draw weight that he needed, or had improper draw length for his needs. He hoped, as weird as this was for him to think, that those bows were given to organizations throughout Starling City for those who wanted to become Olympic archers. It was weird to realize that his attempts to save the city from those who were bleeding it dry had made it so that people thought archery was cool. But that was not the point at issue right now. His choice was.

At his left hand stood a state-of-the-art recurve bow that was, stylistically, a dead ringer for the bow he had learned to shoot from Talia. There would have been a time, before Laurel showed him that he still had a light in him that he had been working to cultivate, where the bloodshed that this bow had brought would not have bothered him. But now, especially after the troubles he had found in dealing with Slade Wilson and Mei Gulong, he found that shedding of blood to be painful to remember. After all, it was that path that had led him to the situation he found himself in. And that recurve bow, more than the green hood he wore now in tribute to Shado and Yao Fei, reminded him of that path and those choices. For good, or ill, if he used that bow as the Green Arrow, he would always be walking that dark path.

At his right hand, was a compound bow. It was also state-of-the-art, and was almost cartoonishly accurate. And as he held it, he felt none of the weight of his past life. He could be better, a master archer who didn’t kill unless those he was battling against left him no choice. There would always be a part of him that wanted to feed his darker impulses, to be the monster who hunted other monsters. But that wouldn’t be honoring Yao Fei, Akio, or Taiana to be the person who did that. The only flaw in picking this one was that he felt, somehow, as though he would be endangering his ability to say he was a truly great archer if he used a compound bow. He had heard many times, from Talia and the few archers whom he had made common conversation with, that using a compound bow of this sort was almost like cheating. But, as he thought about it further, Talia had wanted him to be a monster. She had told him it was in his best interests to feed that part of himself, and he now knew the flaw in her argument. Besides, he liked how this bow felt more than the recurve bow.

So, with his choice made, he pulled out his rangefinder and his targets. If he was going to best Slade Wilson once and for all, he needed to be as ready as he could possibly be.

 ** _Meanwhile, in the Foundry’s Sparring Area_** ….

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(Laurel’s POV)

Laurel Lance knew John Diggle had originally been brought on as a tactical planner and liaison to just about every major governmental and law enforcement organization with initials. But right now, she was discovering that he was also an excellent sparring partner. She could go as hard with him as with anyone, and not worry about creating any tension like it might if she was training with Oliver. They loved each other with their whole heart, so that meant that it was quite a bit harder for them to go all out with each other when they needed to make sure their fighting skills were up to where they needed to be. She had no problem going all-out with John, because while he felt to her like the brother she had always wanted, he wasn’t in love with her.

But as they sparred, and John continually reminded her to take special care to re-chamber her side kicks and roundhouse kicks, her mind went to the opponent she was trying to deal with. Mei Gulong had not just broken her leg, but she had chipped away at her confidence and the way she saw herself. Dinah Laurel Lance, after all, had BECOME the Black Canary. She liked walking through neighborhoods and being greeted by store-owners, kids studying to go to college, and parents walking home enjoying a night out. It made her feel like she was doing something useful with her nights, and honestly quite a bit like the detective her father was. If not for the whole “She could in no way tell her father that she was actually the Black Canary” thing, she almost wanted to talk about best practices for walking a beat. So to know that someone she had never met was able to defeat her so thoroughly, without ever having landed a single shot, was a painful thing to contemplate.

As she finished working her kicks, and contemplated practicing with nunchaku to give her another weapon in addition to her bo staff, she knew what her advantage over Mei Gulong was going to be. Sure, Mei’s fighting skill was honed to an incredible sharpness but it was also quite clear where her motivation came from. Lady Shiva had taught her to find her reason to fight, in addition to giving her the tools. And she did it for love, pure and simple. The love she held for her city, for her family and friends who had been there and supported her when she needed it, and her all-encompassing, heart-filling love of Oliver.

She needed him; in a way she hadn’t always been able to put words to. It was his strength, his willingness to bring her into his life, that had helped her to be the hero her city deserved, and provided her the comfort to find out who she was truly to be.

Mei Gulong, on the other hand, was fueled by hate. She hated Oliver for what Slade had told her he had become, and by extension she hated Laurel because she had been manipulated into believing their love dishonored Shado’s existence. Hate burnt fast, but without more hate to feed it, it would die quickly.

Love, on the other hand, could burn forever. It was constant, especially the love Oliver and Laurel shared. Knowing that, Laurel realized they were going to win. Slade might be stronger than most normal men, and Mei Gulong’s fighting skill was elite, but they weren’t truly united like Oliver and Laurel were. And knowing that, she started throwing kicks faster and harder than she had before. The Black Canary would fly again, and this time, there would be nothing that could stop her from making sure justice was done.

**_At Queen Consolidated…._ **

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But while Oliver Queen shared his girlfriend and partner’s optimism, he was nothing if not a strong believer in proper preparation. He didn’t want to go into a battle with someone who knew him as well as Slade Wilson did, without having every possible avenue of defeat closed. So, he managed to “appropriate” a vial of Mirakuru from a shipment being sent in to Slade and quickly ran it over to Henry Fyff to see if he could make an antidote.

Henry Fyff was an interesting choice to be his medical consultant. His bedside manner was in desperate need of improvement, for one. For another, there had been rumors that Henry had a highly passionate relationship with someone in applied sciences named Felicity Smoak, meaning the possibility of him being blackmailed into doing someone’s evil bidding was higher than he would have liked. But he was also a graduate of the University of Washington’s medical school summa cum laude, and had gone on a rapid rise through the Queen Consolidated biomedical department. In addition, he was a 3rd dan black belt in taekwondo so he didn’t ever feel like Henry couldn’t take care of himself.

Nonetheless, he was very careful with what he tasked Henry with. Lord knows, anything this vital could easily be cracked by someone with the intelligence-gathering skills of a former member of Australian Special Forces. So, he didn’t tell Henry what he was working on, and immediately sent Curtis over to plunge all of his records into a secure server that could only be opened with a retinal scan and a biometric lock. If Slade Wilson was going to steal the info on how to create the cure for Mirakuru, he was going to have to come to the Queen Consolidated offices and do it himself.

But as that thought came to him, he suddenly heard the sound of a window crashing in his private office across the hall. Rushing there, remembering he left a collapsible recurve bow in a secret drawer in his desk, he rolled his eyes when he saw Sara Lance standing in the middle of his office with a compound bow and quiver on her back. But and this amused him and worried him in equal measure, she was not alone. Because next to her, standing tall and elegant in a black pantsuit that seemed to be right off of the finest fashion designers in Paris, was another woman who was also holding a bow and quiver herself.

“Mr. Queen. My name is Nyssa Raatko, but I am sure my name is not the question at issue here. You met my sister once, and she told me she taught you quite a bit about how to shoot a bow. I believe I can take your skills to a level you cannot comprehend yet” said this Nyssa Raatko, speaking in the clipped and highly formal manner that Oliver had heard only once before. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t be?

“Your sister, Ms. Raatko? The only person I can think of is someone named Talia, but she never told me her last name. But I get the sense that there is more to your story than the fact you are related to someone I met for a few weeks while I was away” Oliver said, beginning to realize who this could possibly be and why it was that Sara was appearing in his office. “Isn’t that right, Ms. Al Ghul?”

Faster than he had seen anyone move, even Lady Shiva, Nyssa drew a Chinese dao and held it to Oliver’s neck.

“How do you know that name?” Nyssa said with cool focus in her voice, and in this moment, Oliver felt very much like he finally intimately understood what all the people he had drawn arrows on felt. And, he realized, he didn’t mind it. He wasn’t stealing from senior citizens or getting innocent children hooked on Vertigo. He was confident in his skills, so he would answer her question with no sign of fear at all. He was the Green Arrow, after all. It was past time he acted like it.

“Because I defeated the one you call Al-Z’yb, and put him in a prison that no one can escape from on an island loaded with traps. Because I am the Green Arrow” Oliver said, and instantly Nyssa’s entire posture changed.

“Then our work can begin. I have seen your technique, and while good, it needs work. Your beloved’s sister is my beloved, and we have agreed to put down roots here. In that spirit, I will teach the Green Arrow how to be the best shot you can be. Even if, for reasons I do not understand, you intend to use a compound bow instead of a recurve bow as a true archer would” Nyssa Raatko says, the barest hint of a smirk on her face.

“I am a protector, not an assassin. The people in this city, in the city that our beloveds have lived in their entire lives, do not need someone else operating in the shadows. What they need, and what I and those who join me in my mission hope to provide, is someone to remove those who use those shadows to drain this city of its resources. I appreciate you willing to teach me to be a better shot, but I will not abandon my mission. It is as important to me as my beloved is” said Oliver, and he hoped both Nyssa and Sara understood.

And so, Nyssa and Oliver shook hands. He supposed, if he was going to fight Slade Wilson, he needed all the help he could get.

**_Meanwhile, at a high-rise in Sydney……._ **

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Mei Gulong wanted to fight. She was craving action, and the chance to break both Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance. But, Slade had told her the truth about what it was they were doing and why. And when she heard his plan, beautifully detailed with offshoots for every contingency, she agreed that hiding out was better. But today? Today she wanted to at least train. But instead she was waiting, for Slade to come back with what he said was the final piece in his plan. And then, Slade came. She knew him to be a warrior, a man far more comfortable in body armor than a suit. Knowing that, she smirked as a man and a woman stood next to him.

“Mei, this is David Cain and this is Talia Al Ghul. They, too, have been betrayed by our common enemies. And so, they will help us defeat them wholly. The time when the Green Arrow and the Black Canary fall at our feet is soon. Very, very soon.”


	6. Demons, Dragons, Canaries, And Arrows

Chapter 6: Demons, Dragons, Canaries, and Arrows.

**_In a high-rise in Sydney……_ **

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Slade Wilson knew, in his bones, that the kid he had saved from certain death didn’t deserve it. He had taken his gift, the one Slade had bestowed on him when he chose to not just kill him like he deserved, and done nothing but absolutely squander it. What happened to the hardened warrior he had seen on the island? And then, he realized absolutely what had happened.

It had all started the day they were about to leave. If he hadn’t been so selfish, so in desperate need to prove himself better than the coward he had apparently been when he had found himself on Lian Yu, Slade would have been home right now, raising his kids as a single father with Shado by his side. But instead, Oliver Queen had barged his way into his life and decided to be a hero for once in his life. And ever since that moment, Slade had begun to hate him. It was little things at first, the way he seemed to gravitate to Shado for tutelage instead of him. He knew that, intellectually, he was learning how to shoot a bow from her and what Slade knew about archery, and specifically Chinese archery, could fill a shot glass and have room left over. But it still bothered him to think that Oliver couldn’t help himself around a beautiful woman.

Little by little, the hate started to feed on itself, grow larger and larger with innocuous things. At first, he could take the hate and release it against whatever soldiers stumbled across his path. But eventually that wasn’t enough. He needed to release it against its true target, as much as he resisted that. So finally, when Oliver was mourning over Shado, it exploded. He tortured Oliver for months, broke him in as many ways as he could dream of, and tried to end his life. He knew, in his soul, Oliver deserved it.

But somehow, the dog had survived. He had taken all that had been done to him, all that he had **_DESERVED_** to have done to him, and somehow made the decision to use it to guide him through pain and darkness. Revenge was needed for Oliver’s sins, and he got the very real idea that he needed to slow-play this to ensure the most pain and devastation.

So over three years, he began to plan. He turned Shado’s sister Mei Gulong into his closest companion. Underneath so many shell companies that even FBI-level forensic accountants would have taken years to unwrap it all, he started setting up surveillance around anyone and everyone Oliver told him about. And then, when Oliver reappeared in Starling City and started to become the Green Arrow, he put his final plan in place. Now, with Oliver and Laurel’s mind on him and Mei, it was time to crush him once and for all.

**_Meanwhile, back in Starling City……_ **

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Laurel Lance sat in a bar-style stool drinking a protein shake made up of chocolate protein powder, orange-flavored creatine, and a three-berry blend and noticed how hard her boyfriend Oliver Queen was working. Ever since her sister Sara, and her girlfriend Nyssa, had arrived in town Oliver and Laurel had been put through their paces in a way that they had only found with Lady Shiva. Nyssa had taken Oliver to one archery range after another until he could shoot with the same accuracy via both a recurve and compound bow, and Sara had taught Laurel how to read a fighter and a room in the way John Diggle had been.

And objectively, this extra skills work made sense. To be sure, they could feel Slade Wilson and Mei Gulong looming over everything they did so a lot of their non-day job time had been spent training all the martial arts they knew, and planning siege works should they be attacked in their personal lives. Knowing that the only enemies who truly had defeated you, and had done it were just looming out there in the world waiting, was not exactly a great feeling.

But this didn’t feel like proper due diligence, not anymore. And if she was being honest with herself, it hadn’t for days now. But she didn’t know what to do, what to say to make him understand he was working himself to a nub. And then, the combination lock clicked in her mind and she saw it.

It was because he was scared of Slade going after her. She noticed, idly, that whenever they were training her to fight off Mei, he was intensely training her in the finer points of whatever skills he wanted to make sure she had, but that was it. But when he was working on beating Slade, he was running himself ragged. The Green Arrow wasn’t scared of anyone, stopped bank robberies and drug rings, and was the guy who walked you home from a night out in the Glades if you knew where to look for him. Oliver Queen, though? Oliver Queen was, to his girlfriend at least, quite obviously TERRIFIED.

Walking up to him, putting her finished blender bottle in the sink with the mental reminder to clean that up later, the Black Canary hugged her boyfriend tightly and then slowly pulled him down to her by his jaw.

“I know what you’re trying to do, Ollie, and what you’re trying to protect me from. And I appreciate it, and love you for trying to do it, more than you could possibly know. But you need to rest, and recover, and do all the things that you taught me to do when I decided I wanted to join you in this quest. You can beat Slade. I know it in my bones, and so should you.

But this Oliver, the one living on no sleep and fear tinged with rage? This Oliver, the one who loves me but hasn’t shared my bed in days, or talked to me about anything other than training in weeks? This Oliver can’t beat Slade. Can’t dream of it.

Slade lost his humanity a long time ago, but to beat him, you have to still have yours.”

Smiling comfortably, Oliver looks down at her and knows she’s right. Hanging up his compound bow, and removing the jade-green tape from around his hands that was covering his fists, the Green Arrow tucked into a French-style omelet before walking to his California King bed and asking Laurel to join him. If he was going to beat someone with Slade’s qualifications and skills, and there was absolutely no way in the world he was going to do anything but hand his former brother his ass, he couldn’t do it without sleep, proper nutrition, and love.

Slade might have the sleep, and the nutrition, but he couldn’t know love anymore. Anyone who was doing what he was doing didn’t have the ability. And that, more so than his skill with a bow or what he could do with his hands, was his secret weapon. This city, and the people in it, were just as much his love as Laurel was. And he would go down fighting to keep them safe.

But if he couldn’t remember what he was fighting for, and why he was doing it, what would be the point?

**_Meanwhile, at the Lance household…._ **

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Sara Lance had done every exceedingly violent thing a woman could do. She had carved through whole swaths of the Triads in Hong Kong, beaten back the rape gangs of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and even went head-up with former Chechen separatists in Russia. Simply put, if injustice was being done and those whom it was being done to could not rely on traditional law enforcement arms to help them, someone would make a phone call and there would be Sara Lance to do what needed to be done. And one of those times, to her great amusement and joy, she found the woman she knew she was going to spend the rest of her life with.

Nyssa Al-Ghul had seen and heard enough stories from her old life in Nanda Parbat to realize that if she kept on with her life the way it is, she’d be a ghost. Sure, there would be a body with her name on it wandering the world. But it’d be the corpse of Nyssa Al-Ghul, not someone with their own hopes, dreams, admirations, and fantasies. But, and this she understood also, she could not just sit idly by with all the injustice in the world and do nothing to stop it. And so she helped where she could, teaching her skills to those who needed to be taught how to defend themselves.

One night in the Cambodian jungles, though, caused these two people to meet each other. They were each trying to figure a way to shut down a gang of rebels who were dragging innocent women from the countryside into the jungles and having their way with them. And when they saw each other, tall and graceful, they decided they wanted to get to know each other better. Without saying a word, they looked into each other’s eyes and agreed on this point. And then, they stormed the compound. With nothing more than bows and their own boundless fighting skills, Nyssa and Sara broke these savage criminals completely. While none of them were dead, those who were later captured by the Cambodian police and INTERPOL all agreed that they wish they had been.

And so, their romance began. It wasn’t that they were defined by violence, it was more that they understood the need for justice and that sometimes traditional law enforcement wasn’t going to be able to do what needed to be done.

Knowing that, Sara needed to return home to Starling City. She knew her city had darkness, and injustice, woven into its very DNA and needed as many people to help cleanse it as could be found. One night, over recklessly expensive cognac and coq au vin at a high-end restaurant in Marseille, she told her love her plan. Sara would return to Starling City, and join those who were trying to solve the problem. Once she heard it, Nyssa decided she would use her skills to help the police of the city fight against the villains she knew would come to try and destroy it.

Of course, Nyssa was also looking forward to going to Starling City to test herself against the Green Arrow and the Black Canary. Word of their exploits had traveled in her circles, and she was quite interested in seeing if the rumors she heard about their skills were actually true.

But, she thought, she also needed to use her talents for the greater good. So, she would offer her services as a tactical trainer for Starling City’s SWAT team units. Things were going to be normal for her and her beloved, or at least as normal as two people with their skills could ever expect to get.

**_Meanwhile, in Malaysia……_ **

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Talia Al Ghul was furious. She had spent 2 whole years teaching Oliver Queen about archery and its history, and now she was seeing him use compound bows and trick arrows like he was some kind of circus performer. Gods, it was so…. Disappointing.

He couldn’t be this weak, and soft, could he? She didn’t understand, **_couldn’t_** understand, what new thing had come into his life and convinced him that he couldn’t be the figure of vengeance that she had spent so long sculpting him into. And then, she remembered. That damned picture. Everywhere he went, everything he did, Oliver Queen could not let go of that damned picture.

Her name was Laurel Lance, and she didn’t want to know anything else about her but she did. She knew Oliver loved her with all of his heart and whatever soul he still had left, and she also knew she was the only woman he ever wanted to be with.

And instantly, she knew. Somehow, some way, Laurel had figured out his secret and made him change.

So when Slade Wilson arrived in her life, and told her of his plan to destroy them both, she agreed wholeheartedly. If Oliver Queen refused to look into the abyss of his soul, and welcome the monster that was there, she would show him what a true monster, and a true archer, looked like. 


	7. And So We Move Towards War

Chapter 7: And So We Move Towards War.

(Author’s Note: Two people from the Arrowverse make their debuts here, and one person who isn’t joins them. Enjoy the show, please. Also, if you need mental images for Batman, I am going for Thomas Gibson. He carries the right kind of patrician exterior to make you believe he could be Bruce Wayne.)

**_At a Queen Consolidated Bioinformatics Research Facility in Central City…._ **

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Dinah Laurel Lance remembered when she arrived in Central City and felt like everything about her had changed. But, and this is key, she also remembered what it was like to know that there were others who were going through it with her. And of all the people that she had heard about from Central City, one person stuck with her like glue. When she staggered to the bullet train in Central City, fear and bone-deep sorrow fighting to be her primary emotions, she remembered the boyish young man sitting in a hospital bed who appeared to be fighting for his life. As she left, she had managed to find a card with her name on it and handed it to his foster father and his daughter begging them to keep in touch once they knew more.

She didn’t really know him, but she had seen his presentation on forensics best practices at that evidence gathering conference and freely admitted she was enthralled with what he was saying. It was his genuine joy of, as he put it, helping victims find closure. Even before she became the Black Canary, that was why she became a lawyer. There was nothing quite as exciting as knowing that you helped make someone’s life better, and more meaningful, just by ensuring that the law worked for them instead of acting like another thing that was out to ruin their lives. This Barry Allen, she understood, shared the same heart for justice that she had. And to hear that he was affected by that particle accelerator hurt.

So when she heard he woke up, and had called her straight away, she convinced Oliver that they needed to go to Central City and see him. Turns out, there was some bleeding-edge Applied Sciences stuff being built there too, so Oliver Queen **_AND_** the Green Arrow had perfectly good reasons to take a weekend vacation.

(Barry Allen’s POV)

There were days when Barry Allen’s life was impossibly weird. Sure, he had been given speed above and beyond what anyone else in the world had. But he still felt, for all of that power coursing through him, like he was missing something in his life. And then he knew what it was, what he had to do. He felt like these powers were given to him for reasons other than to be able to simply do all of his work before 11 AM. He needed to make something better for himself, but he just couldn’t figure out how.

And then, he suddenly discovered that he could use his speed to stop muggings, intervene in bank robberies, and even help Ms. Thomas over near the highschool finish painting her fence. And while he was doing that, he could finally begin to work on how it was that a man with his exact powers had been responsible for killing his mother and framing his father. He could do all the things he had ever wanted to do, and the model for what he wanted to do were two people: The Green Arrow and the Black Canary. Sure, he wasn’t in their **_LEAGUE_** in terms of fighting ability, but he could be as kind and as generous to those who just needed a helping hand as they were.

He had been to Starling City a couple of times, before he got his powers, when he took a “vacation” to follow up on some cases that looked impossible to the untrained eye. He had met, and become friendly, with Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance. Then later on, he met Laurel Lance again at the regional conference on evidence gathering the night of the particle accelerator explosion. They were both nice people, and it always struck him as weird that they were so kind when everyone else in Starling was nowhere close to that.

So when he got a phone call telling him to meet Oliver at the Queen Consolidated bioinformatics lab in Central City, he didn’t think much of it. Sure, he had to actually take a cab instead of speed over because he didn’t think Oliver Queen was the sort of person who would have understood his powers or even want to.

Thus, he was planning wholly on keeping his secret. But as he was about to discover, his plans were about to hit a brick wall of reality.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen was not what you would call well-adjusted, even in the best of times. Doing wetwork for a government agency so black-ops that other black-ops agencies deny their existence, before being put back on the deserted island you were freed from by said government agency, does things to a person that they will never be free of. Even while his soul was slowly being rebuilt just from being around Laurel, he understood he needed a trained professional to help him finish the job. That, though, was a question for another place and time. Right now, he was dealing with another thing that came about from being not that well-adjusted. Namely, he was still getting used to the idea of superpowers being in his world.

It was different with Laurel, and he didn’t know why. Maybe it was that he knew her, knew that suddenly having the ability to scream loud enough to crack multiple stained glass windows wouldn’t change fundamentally the person she was. Or maybe it was that her powers weren’t a crutch for her, a thing she used all the time to make up for some fundamental skill of heroism that she lacked and needed to cultivate.

Whatever the reason was, Oliver had heard enough through the grapevine of what was happening in Central City that he had taken time to prepare himself mentally for whatever in the world he would be walking into. Sure, he was Oliver Queen now but he didn’t know when he’d need to become the Green Arrow. So, as he waited in the bioinformatics lab, he remembered that he had brought his compound bow and quiver in with him. He hoped to goodness he’d never have to use it.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

From what she remembered of Barry Allen, he wanted justice more than he swore rock-ribbed faithfulness to the law. Watching your mother be murdered in front of you, and believing with your entire heart and soul that your father had been framed for it, would absolutely be the sort of thing that would make you understand that the legal system couldn’t stretch as far as it needed to in order to ensure that fairness could be found. Knowing that about him, she also knew that he wouldn’t turn in the Black Canary and the Green Arrow to the authorities.

So, while Oliver waited, Laurel wriggled herself into the black-and-violet leather suit Curtis Holt had made for her. Once she was done with that, Laurel non-verbally asked Oliver to do the same thing. She admitted that his malachite-green suit looked perfect on him, and that he looked like a man who could be both a figure of menace to the rich and shamelessly greedy and a figure of hope and welcome to those who were suffering under that tremendous weight.

In this moment, Dinah Laurel Lance made a choice. She would let Barry Allen in on their secret, and if he didn’t run to the police, they would pool resources, and help each other when they needed it. The world was too small, and the hand of evil too large, to try and do something like this alone.

(Barry Allen’s POV)

Walking into the Queen Consolidated research facility, Barry Allen could have expected to see anything. A surprise party from Iris West and Joe West as a reward for surviving a nine-month coma, a job offer to move, literally anything.

The last thing, on a list of a million things, that he could have imagined seeing was the Green Arrow and the Black Canary standing in the lobby. He felt the shivers of nerves go down his spine, and then cascade out to every limb until he was literally shaking like he was in the middle of an ice storm. This, of course, meant that he couldn’t help himself and flew across the lobby in a lemon-colored blur until he crashed into a wall. Sheepishly, Barry Allen got up and got the 2nd shock of his night.

Because, unmasked and standing in front of him, were Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance. The Green Arrow and the Black Canary, the literal king and queen of superhero exploits, were standing in front of him. And judging by their reactions, they weren’t wary of being unmasked in front of him. If anything, they seemed welcoming of him. Honestly, it felt like he was standing in front of an older brother and a big sister.

“Oh my god. You’re the Green Arrow. And you, you’re the Black Canary! This is so awesome. I wanted to do good, just like you guys have done good, and now with this speed I finally can. Oh my god this is so exciting. My name is Barry Allen, but you guys already knew that. I got hit by a particle accelerator, and now I can run faster than any man alive. But I’m debating whether or not I should be a hero like you guys are, or if I should just allow my speed to be harnessed to help people cure diseases. That’s what Harrison Wells wants me to do. What would you suggest?” Barry says, seeming like the young man in need of guidance he so obviously is.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

At this moment, Oliver realized that he could literally see little bursts of electricity and lightning pop off of this Barry Allen. And remembering how his speed was generated, it suddenly dawned on him that his nerves were going to cue another burst of energy which none of them really needed. The more he thought about it, honestly, the more it felt like he was talking to the younger brother he had always wanted. Sure, Thea was the best thing that had happened to him outside of Laurel, but there was just something different about having a younger brother. And this kid, all full of joy and excitement, felt so much like having one he didn’t hardly know what to do with himself. Even despite that, though, he knew what this kid needed. He needed a rock, someone who had been through what he had and could provide calm counsel unencumbered by nerves. Honestly, it felt like riding a bike to do it.

“Barry? **_RELAX_**. I know this is exciting for you, but we can’t help you unless you can relax. Now, what I would tell you to do is make the world a better place. If you think you are best served being this generation’s James Harrison, whose blood saved more people than they can count, that’s a noble thing. But if you want to save your city, and save the world, from those who would do it wrong, that is a noble thing too. I’ve heard about you actually, someone stopping bank robberies, and painting fences for the old ladies in your neighborhood. That’s what this city needs, Barry. Someone to do good, to be a shining example.

As far as Harrison Wells goes, I know he wants to pay penance for starting the particle accelerator explosion. If I had done what he had, I’d want to too. But you have to be very careful about him. Anyone who needs absolution that bad will do just about anything to make themselves feel better, and that might mean lying to you. I’m not going to tell you he is lying to you, Barry, but you need to be careful around him. You need to watch for what he does, and how he thinks. I’m not asking you to do anything other than that. Because, Mr. Allen, I get the sense we’ll be seeing an awful lot of each other.”

(Barry Allen’s POV)

Well, this day could have not gotten any better. He got to meet the Green Arrow and the Black Canary. And he got some real advice, advice he was planning on taking.

Giving them hugs, and promising to come see them in Central City whenever they were ready, Barry contemplated what he was going to do next. He knew he was going to be a hero, that much was clear. But how? He couldn’t just run around in street clothes. He was going to head to STAR Labs and figure out what to do next. But first…. Food. He was STARVING.

But as he would eat, he would be happy. His heroes, the people he knew would never stop trying to do what was right and noble, trusted him and agreed he should do his best to do good. That felt like such a victory, nothing else would really matter.

**_A few hours later, inside the lobby of the Central City Four Seasons……_ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen was never quite sure how to feel about the fact he was a billionaire multiple times over. On one hand, it did help. He doubted very much he would have been able to have Laurel’s suit made to the quality it was, or get that 60-arrow quiver that had gotten him out of trouble more times than he could count, without the money his parents had given him. For that, he would be endlessly thankful. He could, in nightmares that were fading from his mind more and more by the month, imagine what would happen if Laurel somehow died out in the field with him. He’d stay in the bunker, only going out to be the Green Arrow. Oliver Queen would die with her. He was ABSOLUTELY sure about that.

But on the other hand, he could hear what people said about him after announcing another gargantuan charity donation. It hurt for people to imply, whether obliquely or straight-out, that he wasn’t genuine about wanting to help save the world. He knew how his parents had gotten their money, and the exploitation of those who could have used their money for essentials would always gnaw at him. It was an ugly open wound on the Queen legacy that he could never close or cauterize.

He wasn’t sure how to handle it. He supposed, for as long as he lived, he probably would never be. But, he realized finally, he didn’t have to be. As long as he had people in his life who he loved, people who would love him enough to tell him where he was going wrong, it would be ok.

As he was thinking about that, sipping from a black coffee, he stood up and put his coffee down. Bruce Wayne was here, in this hotel, walking towards him.

But Bruce wasn’t walking with the easy strut of a billionaire. Lord knows he had been around Tommy, and Malcolm, enough to know what someone who had all the money, and no real responsibility, moved like.

Oliver Queen had not spent 5 years being tortured, doing wetwork for ARGUS, and finishing up someone’s vendettas to not be able to read a room well enough to see who the threats were within it. And right now, at this exact moment, Bruce Wayne was the biggest threat here. What was going on?

(Bruce Wayne’s POV)

Central City was so functionally different from Gotham, and everywhere else he had been in his efforts to be the absolute best he could be, that even someone like him was momentarily jarred by it. It was just so bright here, so unencumbered by the darkness of crime and bloodshed and loss, that it felt like a different world.

But, he had to keep reminding himself, he was here on business. He wasn’t here to gawk at how much Central City was unlike his own hometown, or do recon work on that blur people had been talking about. (Although, Bruce supposed, maybe that would be something he could look into after he was done here.) Instead, he was here to warn the Green Arrow and the Black Canary that a mutual acquaintance of all three of them was on the way to their home, and most assuredly out for blood once she got there. He couldn’t be the person he wanted to be, the person his parents and Alfred raised, if he let a fellow traveler on the path of justice be harmed if he could stop it from happening.

And so, he had to find Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance and do so quickly. Figuring out they were the Green Arrow, and the Black Canary, respectively was not a feat of detective skill that would have impressed Dan Mahoney, or Henri Ducard. All it was, really, was simple deduction.

Oliver Queen had spent 5 years away on a deserted island. And when he returns, the very same week, a vigilante shows up in Starling City called the Hood who knows how to handle this and is exceedingly skilled with a bow. Then, right after that, that guy disappears and is replaced by someone called the Green Arrow with the same skills. This is too easy.

As far as the Black Canary goes, that trick was not down to anything Batman knew, but to something Bruce did. Bruce had been to enough high-society dinners to realize that wherever Oliver Queen went in a tux, Laurel Lance would be behind him in a cocktail dress. They were attached in a way he had seen only with Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and from what he could remember from the lives of his parents. So it didn’t take a great logical leap to think that they would have found themselves in the vigilante life, and wanted to do it together.

But, while they were undeniably skilled combatants, it felt sometimes like they didn’t really know just how many truly powerful enemies they had made. Malcolm Merlyn and David Cain were still high-ranking members of the League of Assassins and so getting them sprung from INTERPOL custody wouldn’t be too much work for the ancient order to get done. Add to that Slade Wilson and Mei Gulong, in addition to whatever confederates and students Talia Al Ghul had working on her behalf, and it suddenly dawned on Bruce Wayne that he’d be signing their death warrant if he didn’t fight alongside them.

Well, time to call Damien, and Dick, and Stephanie. Gotham would need to be protected for the next few weeks.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

“Mr. Wayne. To what do I owe this pleasure?” Oliver said, having an entire childhood of high-society functions to make him wholly used to the notion of being polite to someone that you’re not particularly interested in being polite to.

“Mr. Queen, I have reason to believe that yourself and Laurel Lance are in grave danger. The longer you remain in Central City, the easier it will be for those who wish to do you harm to find you and attack.” Bruce says, and it begins to become clear what the Wayne Industries CEO, and billionaire multiple times over, is **_ACTUALLY_** saying.

Somehow, Bruce Wayne has an in with Batman, and the Dark Knight is using Bruce as a go-between to let him know about it. Right now, at this moment, that’s the only explanation that makes sense.

“Thank you, Mr. Wayne. We will be leaving this hotel tonight and heading back home to Starling City, where our security team will handle this situation” Oliver says, moving to call Laurel and let her know to get ready.

“Mr. Queen?” Bruce says, and for an unknown reason, Ollie feels a chill go down his back.

“Yes, Mr. Wayne?”

“Talia Al-Ghul is coming. She’s coming with David Cain, Malcolm Merlyn, Slade Wilson, and Mei Gulong. If you’re going to be the Green Arrow and fight them off, you’ll need Batman’s help. He’ll contact you when you get home.”

Stunned into silence, all Oliver Queen can do is nod. When his brain finally comes back online, all he can think is now he, and Laurel, are moving towards war.


	8. For This Is The End

Chapter 8: For This Is The End.

(Author’s Note: Thank you to the Lauriver discord for helping me work this out. DM me for the link if you’re interested in joining.)

At the Foundry………

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(John Diggle’s POV)

There were things people chose to happily ignore about former Army Master Sergeant John Diggle. For one, his principals in his ‘day job’ as a bodyguard forgot that he had been a three-tour veteran of Afghanistan and thus had seen every sort of drug one could reasonably expect to ingest, inhale, or smoke. He wasn’t going to say anything, of course. That’s just not how being a bodyguard worked. In his head, of course, he disapproved of any kind of drug use but for goodness sake, he didn’t SAY so. His job, as he saw it, was to ensure that his principal did not suffer any physical harm by anyone else’s hand. It was not to make sure that they stayed sober. Sure, he might want them to do that. But he could not, would not, force them.

The other thing people didn’t seem to realize is that John Diggle had a night job, as Spartan. Sure, most of what he did was as a quartermaster, interrogator, and an information gatherer. Oliver and Laurel were, after all, two of the best fighters he had ever seen and were more than capable of taking care of themselves. But, when asked, he did go out there, with 2 standard-army issue Glock 18 pistols loaded with tranquilizer bullets and blanks for maximum efficacy and minimum lethality and a black belt in Jeet Kune Do as a failsafe. As he thought about it, that’s what he was. When the Green Arrow and the Black Canary couldn’t solve a problem, they called on him. And he liked that about the relationship they had. Ever since they had brought him into this, he had enjoyed feeling needed. After the army, he had sort of coasted through various jobs and managing to never really find a calling in any of them. But now, with a city that needed to have the pollution drained from its veins one day at a time, he felt like he had a purpose.

When they got back, he’d thank Laurel and Oliver for giving that to him.

Meanwhile, on the Queen Consolidated private jet heading to Starling City……..

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Something was wrong. She could tell.

She had gotten out of the shower and seen a nervous, but determined, Oliver Queen waiting for her with their suit bags in each hand. Not just the three-piece suit Oliver wears everywhere, but their SUIT BAGS. This could be bad, but she didn’t know how or why. And, not for the first time, Oliver wasn’t saying a word.

It had been a slow going, with lots of arguments about it, but she understood that when Oliver got this scared, he couldn’t tell her anything until he knew how to handle the problem. Words weren’t going to help him do that, not really, so he kept silent when he was terrified.

But eventually, he came over and took her hand in his and started telling her what had happened.

“Bruce Wayne saw me in the lobby while you were showering. He delivered me a message from Batman. (The subtext that their lives as heroes had gotten precisely so weird that one of the world’s richest men was acting as an intermediary to the world’s greatest detective was something they both understood.) Apparently, another one of my teachers is joining up with Slade. And get this, David Cain and Malcolm Merlyn are joining Slade too. I can feel the trap beginning to close, but I don’t know anything about where it’s going to be. But I do know we’re ready. We got through this last time, and we’re better now than we were then.”

Confident he’s got a plan, and that they’re going to follow it, Laurel snacks on some of the Spanish-style pressed sandwiches Oliver had on the private jet. If she was going to war, and she got the very real sense that as soon as they got home they would be doing precisely that, she felt like she should get some nourishment.

Meanwhile, back in Starling City……

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Quentin Lance’s POV)

There were days when Detective 1st Grade Quentin Lance wanted to crawl into a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey, and never come out again. Just the stress of living in a city that, for some reason he had yet to divine, seemed to always end up being thought of as a soft target for a supervillain was enough to drive even a monk in the direction of hard alcohol. But as he thought of it, he knew he couldn’t.

Sara had been brought back into his life, even if she was nothing like the carefree sorority girl that he remembered. She was serious now, and an excellent cop in the Major Crimes Unit. To know that his daughter, someone who he thought he had lost in a boat crash, was alive filled him with joy and hope he didn’t know he could have.

It also, as it turned out, made the annoyance with Oliver Queen less real and more cartoonishly grumpy. Sure, he’d always glower and growl at Oliver every time Laurel went out with him, but there was no real heat in it. He knew Oliver had always tried to do right by his daughters, so he couldn’t hate him.

Besides that, he was a detective and his work kept him entirely too busy to worry about what Oliver Queen was doing with his free time. Just this week, he helped solve quite a few murders and assaults, including one that had links to a drug ring that Sara was working on. And every time he brought the case in front of the district attorney, a larger part of his brain than he was comfortable with kept thinking about the Green Arrow and the Black Canary. He deeply disliked the idea of people operating outside the law and doing what they did. But he also couldn’t deny that they had broken things he, as a detective, could not gain entrance to. He freely admitted to that, and would if anyone asked him. But, and this he realized as well, his cases and what they were doing never truly overlapped.

He supposed the person who had to worry about what those two were doing would be someone like Commissioner Nudocerdo. After all, it was kind of an open secret that there was no real chance for advancement with Jim Gordon in Gotham because no one genuinely believed that anyone who relied on Batman as much as he did could ever be respected as a leader by the men under his command anywhere else.

So as he sat down to catch up on paperwork, and prepare to make calls on the small pile of open investigations he had in front of him, he saw his commanding officer running out of his office like his hair was on fire and making a frantic phone call. Right after that, the SWAT guys and the…. Wait was that the FBI Liaison Officer? Oh FUCK.

At the Queen Consolidated Airfield in Starling City……

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

There was something major going on, he could feel it. 5 years on a deserted island, doing wetwork for a black-ops government agency, and then going right back and trying to become a vigilante meant he had developed a world-class danger sense. And right now, for good or ill, that sense was screaming as loud as anything ever has. Something was rotten, seriously rotten, so Oliver Queen grabbed his gear bag and handed the other one to Laurel Lance. If he had to fight, and the sense that he was going to have to was getting stronger by the minute, he wanted them both to be ready.

And then John Diggle got into the car, and Ollie KNEW.

“At 10:30, while you guys were still in the air, someone took down all the security at Slabside Prison. ALL OF IT. Right now, the FBI’s getting the nonviolent guys in there back in their cells but they’re not going to be able to do that, rebuild the security systems, and stop all of the dangerous guys. So the Green Arrow and the Black Canary are going to come in and assist” John said, even as he frowned at the notion of what this would mean. “And the people in this car know who was behind all of this, even if we can’t prove it. If Slade Wilson is setting this up, he’s going to be the last guy you see. He’s going to be waiting for you guys.”

“John?” Oliver says, steel in his voice. “Call Henry Fyff. Tell him to get me trick and cure arrows and have him meet us at the foundry. Tonight, we end this.”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Oliver was right. They had been training like madmen for this specific point, this specific thing, and so they would finally end Slade Wilson’s hold on them. She knew, instinctively, the trap he was setting for them. He was trying to make them relive their greatest failures, the night they were too weak to stop him and Mei Gulong from doing whatever they wanted. But what Slade didn’t know is that they had prepared for this. Ever since that night, they had gotten themselves used to fighting against multiple opponents. Sara, and Nyssa, had been instrumental in getting them to this place. So had Ted Grant.

As she thought of it further, she realized everything she had gone through, all the people in her life, had been preparing her for this moment. Mei Gulong, and Slade Wilson, had gotten the drop on them the last time. But before they did that, they had to prepare. Slade got them because they weren’t ready for the notion someone would be there once they were finished fighting, and they were too tired to think of a solution.

IT WOULD NOT HAPPEN AGAIN.

Meanwhile, back at the foundry……

\---------------------------------------------------------------

(Thea Queen’s POV)

Thea Dearden Queen had been training ever since she found out her brother was the Green Arrow. And if she was being honest, rescuing people and doing good for her hometown was more of an adrenaline rush than any drug or drink could have ever been. She had, and she’d never admit to this if anyone ever asked her, replaced the addictive qualities of illicit substances with doing good works for those less fortunate than she. Oliver and Laurel did it because they had to, she knew. They couldn’t just let someone be harmed, and not do anything to stop it. It was something she loved about both of them.

She, on the other hand, did it because she loved the feeling. She loved hearing the squeals of delight when Artemis stopped some punk from robbing a grandmother of her pocket money in an alley, and the free meals that were left out for Team Arrow after saving the entire restaurant district of the Glades from a group of strongarm robbers who were preying on them.

At her core, she likes doing this. And she supposed, as long as she could keep doing it and doing for the right reasons, liking it wasn’t so bad.

Right then, though, she saw it. The breaking news on the chyron of every news station in Starling City. A prison riot at Slabside Prison, only the most dangerous prison in the whole of the Pacific Northwest. OH GOD.

(Sara Lance and Nyssa Al-Ghul’s POV)

Well, this was…. Delightful. They had the chance, the real chance, to affect justice to people for whom regular law enforcement held no particular importance. They knew Slade Wilson had enough resources, and influence, that he would just shake off whatever low-grade charge the SCPD could come up with. So, as they entered the foundry where John Diggle was restocking the medical supplies, they knew they were going to be doing something. Sara had become a detective in the Major Crimes Unit, and Nyssa had decided to train the SCPD’s tactical units, precisely because they knew that justice required them to be active participants. So when they heard there was a prison riot, they looked forward to doing something to help, to be useful to the city when it was on the verge of falling into a warzone.

As they were working out, loosening up from long days, the elevator to the foundry opened and out stalked Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance, and they could both tell what they WEREN’T doing. At that exact moment, the tumblers fell into place.

This was Slade. It had to have been. And it would be a great dishonor to step in and not give Oliver and Laurel the chance to properly avenge what had been done to them.

If they were about anything else, if they had one guiding principle above all others, it was about never dishonoring their friends, their families, or themselves. That meant they had to let Oliver and Laurel handle this.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

This would require a foolproof plan. They were not about to again get caught out, with no backup plan. And so, perhaps for the only time, he called a team meeting.

But before he started his plan, the Green Arrow remembered something. A long time ago, he had been given a number by Lady Shiva should he ever need to use it. This seemed like just about the right time.

“Hello? Is this Batman? This is the Green Arrow. I know you were supposed to call me, but we’ve been kind of busy here with the whole prison riot thing that may have made the news there” Ollie said, hoping he wasn’t just leaving a voicemail.

“I know who you are, Mr. Queen. And I’ve been able to see your problem. I dealt with something like this once before, and because I went into it alone, I suffered more than I ever wanted to suffer. It took me years to recover from it, and honestly, there are days I am still unsure I ever actually did. Don’t make my mistakes. And in that spirit, the best hacker in the world, Oracle, is on a Waynetech private jet to Starling City to provide operational support to you as you try and quell the riot. Happy hunting.”

And with that, Batman hangs up.

“So, right now at Slabside, there’s a prison riot. We know who put it into motion, and we know what he expects to happen when we get there. What he doesn’t know is that we have allies. So, what we’re going to do is this. John and Curtis, you are going to liaise with the FBI and the SCPD. They’re going to need people to get the nonviolent guys back in the cell and make sure they have enough of everything. Also, Oracle’s coming in from Gotham City to help get the security system back online. I doubt anyone’s going to try and gainsay the IT department, but if they do, you and John need to turn them back. Nyssa and Sara, Talia and David Cain are with Slade. I don’t think there’s anyone you guys would want to fight more than those 2. Thea, you’re watching the city tonight. I doubt anyone’s going to try anything hyper-aggressive but if they do, it’s your job to put it down.

Slade and Mei are for just us. They started this. Tonight, with your help, we finish it.”

Knowing what they all had to do, they didn’t even need to hear the words. Everyone grabbed their gear and their weapons. Tonight, underneath the moonlit air of Starling City, there would be a reckoning. And when it was done, the tormentors of Team Arrow would be finished.

At Slabside Prison……

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(Henry Fyff’s POV)

This one day felt like two weeks, Henry Fyff thought. He supposed, though, when you were dealing with everything they were at the moment, late nights were just commonplace. Still, though, he hadn’t been this tired when he was getting his PH. D in biochemistry.

And later, when John Diggle asked, he would blame what was about to happen entirely on a cocktail of being so tired that remembering your name is a herculean task and genuine excitement. You see, Oracle was like a phantasm, a shadowy figure that other hackers talked about in the same combination of fear and awe that the fighters on Team Arrow talked about Lady Shiva.

And so, when she rolled into the little tent city they had set up, Henry Fyff jumped for joy at the chance of being the Belisarius to Oracle’s Justinian. And, as he watched her get to work, Henry Fyff prepared himself to guard his heroine’s back. Again, much like Oliver said, he didn’t think anyone would be nuts enough to try something so utterly ridiculous as to gainsay the IT Department what with severely armed, and severely grumpy, US Marshals, FBI Agents, and Starling City SWAT all wandering around wishing someone would want to try something. Nonetheless, he had been trained to never assume. And so, he tried to remember all of his taekwondo training as Oracle worked over his shoulder.

One more long night, and then a glorious rest.

(Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance’s POV)

Here they were again. An entire building of the Pacific Northwest’s most vicious criminals, and them being the only people who could put the mad dogs down. This wasn’t going to be the last time that they did this. Nowhere close. Last time, they were alone. (Sure, they had Curtis Holt in their ear but he was back at the Foundry providing tactical support and chatter.) This would be different. John and Henry Fyff were watching Oracle’s back as she rebuilt Slabside’s prisons. Sara and Nyssa were on-site, waiting for the go order to make an old-style League of Assassins challenge to give them their reckonings.

So, as it should have been, Oliver and Laurel found themselves ready to deal with a co-ed prison riot. Holding each other close, each of them willing the other to come home, they got to work.

Laurel immediately dove into the women’s prison while Oliver handled the men’s side of things. (Oliver would hit a girl if she had a weapon, or was holding a detonator for a bomb, but the notion that he would do it just to put a riot down hit him every wrong way something could.)

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Laurel Lance was focused. She knew where Mei would have to be, and she saw what looked like 2 to 3 entire divisions between her and that point. And so, as the Black Canary stood outside the door to the women’s wing of Slabside Prison and watched one of the only female corrections officers in the entire prison be surrounded by 10 women holding god knows what kind of improvised weapons, she modified the promise she had made to herself. She still wasn’t going to kill anyone, but to avenge her defeats, anyone between her and Mei Gulong was going to go down HARD.

The Black Canary kicked the door to the women’s wing open so hard it slammed open and would stay that way, and smirked happily as everyone rushed her only to be dropped rapid-fire with a combination of body blows from her bo-staff, roundhouse kicks that landed like bombs going off (and in one case knocked out quite a few of one woman’s teeth), and the police batons she had kept for exactly this purpose. If she was going to make it up to Mei Gulong, she’d need everything she had available to her.

So, as she confronted one after another of the criminals she had helped put behind bars and knocked them out so that they could be drug back into their cells later, she knew in her heart and soul that she was ready for Mei Gulong. Now, to just find her.

And then, in the warden’s office which connected the two halves of the prison on a bridge, she saw her. Mei Gulong, in a catsuit that put her in mind of Lady Shiva, was waiting for her. This was about to be more fun than she realized.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Part of the fun of being an archer, Oliver Queen decided, was that you could park yourself in an elevated area out of anyone’s view and do all the work you needed to do. He wasn’t about to be the sort of guy who killed prisoners, he knew that. He also knew he needed to be ready for Slade Wilson, so this couldn’t take too much time.

(The thought that if there was ever another riot, the SCPD might use the chaos as a chance to settle up with all the criminals they couldn’t make cases on does not fill him with joy.)

So, the Green Arrow found himself a spot and got to work. He grabbed all of his sleeping gas arrows, and all of his tranquilizer arrows, and got to work. By the time the last sleeping gas arrow was fired, three-quarters of the prisoners were sleeping or otherwise knocked cold. That left, by his count, 10 prisoners awake and angry that their numbers advantage had been crippled.

They would not get the same luxury of simply being put to sleep, or tranquilized with Henry Fyff’s cocktail. They would get hurt. And so they were. Pencak Silat was what he would use here, having realized that in close quarters quick and powerful strikes would be what was needed. After the last one fell, out cold from a hook kick to the jaw that landed like a rifle blast, Oliver Queen looked up at the warden’s office which happened to connect the two sides of the prison and saw the end of his day waiting for him. Slade Wilson, standing every inch of his 6-7 frame and holding a pair of katanas, slowly walking to the door before booting it off the hinges and then heaving one of his katanas down the three flights of stairs before it lands, blade-down and handle-up, right at Oliver’s feet. The Green Arrow supposed this was the last crumbs of his former brother’s honor. Slade could have impaled him with that sword if he had wanted to. But, since Oliver had made it to this final battle, Slade was going to fight him fairly. Oliver also realized that he was the only one who knew he had studied Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, ancient art of Japanese swordsmanship, for this very eventuality.

The war was on.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

At times like this, ducking combinations so fluid and smooth that it was like fighting against someone who was liquid velvet, Dinah Laurel Lance thanked every god she could think of that she had trained under both Lady Shiva and Wildcat Grant.

Because, at times like this, she realized that if she had sought her martial arts education from anyone else, she’d be unconscious now or worse. Mei Gulong was just that good. But, as Laurel was also figuring out, she wasn’t invincible. Nowhere close.

Blocking and guarding blows was all Laurel was doing for the first little while, and throwing an occasional kick until she saw it. Every single one of Mei’s flurries had a beat to it. Eventually, she timed it and on the downbeat, Laurel struck with an inside backfist to the cheekbone followed by a front kick to the stomach and then a step-up kick to the jaw. As Mei staggered into a corner, Laurel took a millisecond to think about what she wanted to do and then decided that now was not the time. Mei Gulong had broken her knee with nothing but martial arts skill, she was going to leave her for INTERPOL with her martial arts skills. Planting her foot and exerting herself Laurel hit a gorgeous 540-degree double inside crescent kick that would not have seemed out of place in a martial arts movie and smiled as Mei slumped to the floor.

As she looked around, noticing that Oliver and Slade were fighting with swords, she realized something. Oliver had given her so much, protected her so many times, that now she could help him with something. Thinking about it further, though, she got an even better idea. Leaning down, Dinah Laurel Lance deadlifted Mei Gulong up off the floor and onto her shoulders. She had a plan, and this was about to be fun.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He couldn’t think about how much FASTER Slade was than him. He couldn’t think about how, for all the hours he had spent with Tatsu in Hong Kong preparing for this exact but exceedingly rare thing, Slade was already better than he was. Truthfully, Oliver was not in a position to do any real kind of thinking. And then, it came to him.

SLADE had requested this duel. It had been him who had thrown the katana down as if challenging Oliver to not use the bow. Why? He wanted Oliver to lose and figured a duel with swords would be how. Hell, ever since Slade came down, he had fought this battle Slade’s way. That was about to change. Ducking a downward swing, Oliver grabbed Slade’s wrist and dug a flechette loaded with the Mirakuru cure directly into it. Staggering back as the cure did its work, Slade was stunned just long enough for Oliver to think of what he wants to do next. At that moment, he saw something that made him smile.

“Slade!” Oliver yelled with all the bass in his voice that he could muster. “Turn Around!”

And Slade did, only to see the Black Canary dump his love in a corner unconscious and beaten. Raging, Slade charged at the Green Arrow only to get caught in the chest with a tranquilizer arrow and then a cable arrow before Laurel made a surreptitious call to the FBI. It was done. Finally, after everything, it was DONE.

**_Outside Slabside Prison……._ **

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(Nyssa Al Ghul and Sara Lance’s POV)

Nyssa Al Ghul and Sara Lance were waiting for Talia Al Ghul and David Cain. They had been training to beat them, and training to ensure that justice would be done for the people that they had wanted to shape Nyssa and Sara into.

But throughout the riot, they had not shown their faces. Nyssa had waited and watched for any of the signs, and they had not arrived. So, they had adapted and served as a sniping force for whatever prisoners had decided to sneak around the back entrances. Before too long, the word got out: It’s better to stay inside than to try and go out, where two demonesses are waiting for you.

And after their latest closure of an escape route, they saw it. The purple smoke in the middle of the woods. Since time immemorial, this was how the League issued their challenge and conducted intra-league squabbles. Knowing that Nyssa smirked.

Even now, her sister could not completely release herself from the ways of her old life. If not for the fact that she had sentenced Nyssa to that old life, it would almost be amusing.

So, with a glance at her love, they went off into the woods. And after several ducks around the pine trees, they see them. Talia and David Cain, scowling with hatred.

The fight was entirely too fast to even contemplate, just a flurry of blows and counters. But it ended when Nyssa slammed David Cain face-first into a pine tree, and Talia was roundhouse kicked with as much force as anyone could muster.

Embracing with the love they didn’t even know they could feel for each other, Sara and Nyssa walked back out of the woods to the prison. Talia and David would not die. Their victory would be complete. That’s all that truly matters.

**_Back at Slabside Prison……._ **

\-------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

It was done, finally. He saw Sara and Nyssa walking back through the woods, so their battle was done too.

And knowing it was finished, there was one other thing he had to do. Waiting until they were clear enough of the prison that no one would get any ideas, Oliver Queen removed his hood and kneels.

“Dinah Laurel Lance, I have not known happiness without you in my life. From this day to my last day, I want you by my side. Will you marry me?”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She had to be hearing this wrong. It couldn’t be like this. Her mind finally came online, and she kept asking one question: what?

What? WHAT?

Finally, when she could think, she said the only thing she could say.

“Yes. Yes. Thousand times yes.”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

And at this moment, his fears were gone. There would always be more enemies, more problems that the Green Arrow and his confederates would need to solve, but at this moment, he was ok with that. With his love by his side, it didn’t matter. Because when you have love, it’s quite alright if the work never stops.


End file.
